Newport-based artist Helen Glassford’s wild Scottish landscapes will adorn the walls of The Scottish Gallery this April.
Her paintings mould together the sensory and visual world with the fleeting, intangible moments which find their place in her work.
These encounters with her environment are manifested through a variety of mediums, including graphite and scumbled glazes, to react and capture the immensity of nature before her and lend their name to the exhibition.
Dundee graduate
Growing up on the outskirts of the Lake District, Glassford studied painting at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design in Dundee in the late 1990s, and later completed a Master of Fine Art there.
Since then, she has lived with her daughter in Newport, overlooking the River Tay.
Glassford finds her subject in the wild landscape of Scotland, in particular the remote edge lands of the North and West, with Encounters focusing on the Western Isles.
Inspired by the American Expressionists and David Young Cameron for realities on form, she finds comfort in the sea and land rhythms of Joan Eardley and Frances Walker.
Glassford seeks to reflect ideas of transience in her landscapes, with a focus on timeless imagery and nameless places.
Graphite lines flowing fast or stuttering with interludes and pauses of calm and space act as metaphorical suggestions to transitional spaces, as explored by artist and one of Glassford’s inspirations John Cage.
Celebrating remote wildness
This collection captures that moment of meeting with nature, as each encounter touches Glassford’s depths of mood, memory and physicality.
Glassford celebrates the remote wildness as she connects with nature, communicating with the mountains and the skies that surround her in this special relationship.
She relishes the solo experience of walking through nature, recording brief observations that might otherwise dissipate over time, enticing her to paint it over and over again.
Glassford’s practice draws connections between the remote locations of Scotland, places so powerful that they evoke romantic Victorian visions of the natural sublime.
She also draws connections with the distinctly northern mentality of belonging and hope as she perceives the psychology of personal consciousness; and the form of her painting, exploring edges and borders to blur this boundary between danger and safety.
Helen Glassford took part in the Realist & Lyrical Landscapes exhibition in September 2020 at The Scottish Gallery, and now returns with her first solo exhibition.
Dream come true
She said: “It has long since been a dream of mine to exhibit my paintings at The Scottish Gallery and I am thrilled to have been able to dedicate my time over the last nine months to such a large body of work for my first solo show with them.
“It has allowed me the freedom to discover new ideas and push the boundaries of the language of landscape painting whilst exploring the wonderfully varied personality of the Scottish landscape.
“These oil paintings are a distillation of the essence of each place visited: rugged shoreline and remote peninsula.
“The wilder, intense and shifting places which are rich with energy and atmosphere.
“Encounters is a celebration of those experiences, trusting that with both time and memory and the accrual of painterly decision-making they become thick with feeling.
“I’m very excited to share this work as a whole and for visitors to share in these experiences and to encounter these moments for themselves.
Helen Glassford: Encounters runs at The Scottish Gallery, 16 Dundas Street, Edinburgh, EH3 6HZ, from Thursday March 31 to Saturday April 30.
