MAY 2011 - NEWSLETTER - "Working the Land".
Joint show by Isle of Lewis, husband and wife artists, Ruth O'Dell and Dave Greenall.
MARCH - APRIL 2011 - NEWSLETTER - "Earth Pleasures and Sea Fancies".
Easter Group Show with a poetry reading by Gerard Rochford from his new book "Figures of Stone".
FEBRUARY 2011 - NEWSLETTER - "Of Feather and Wool".
Featured artist, Martha-Elizabeth Ferguson, in oils and watercolours, works in the space between the landscape we see, and the other landscape of beasts and birds.
DECEMBER 2010 - NEWSLETTER - "And Earth Stood Hard". Winter Group Show.
NOVEMBER 2010 - NEWSLETTER - Featured artist event. Claudia Massie and Peter Brown.
AUGUST 2010 - NEWSLETTER - Whale Song - Marion MacPhee Born on the Isle of Skye, Marion’s work is profoundly influenced by the sea and landscapes of the Western Isles. An interest in Celtic mythology adds further strands of meaning. Since graduating with Honours from Edinburgh College of Art, her work has developed through a series of projects which include; The Blue Man of the Minch; Mountains of Donegal; The Seal’s Story and now Whale Song, the latter inspired by a trip to Nova Scotia and a fascination with the seas of the Scottish Western Seaboard. Using a range of techniques, which include photec etching, monoprint and drypoint etching, the finished work is as mysterious and luminous as the land and sea themselves.
JULY 2010 - NEWSLETTER
Look out for our New Visit Scotland sign!
MAY 2010 - NEWSLETTER - Three Skye photographers exploring Rocks and Sands
Alan Campbell, Ken Bryan and Phil Gorton
Few landscapes are as proudly weather fashioned as the ones exhibited here. From shattered, disintegrating rock forms in glacial corries to violent water courses surging on an eternal journey, carrying their fragments to wild seas, the West of Scotland provides the photographic artist with limitless resource. This epic course from rocks to sands continually inspires the work of the three photographers currently showing at the Airt Gallery.
The journey of the the earth’s rocks has long held resonance for Alan Campbell, interpreting visually the ongoing tussle between the destruction of the old and the emergence of the new.
“ From tumultuous origins, today’s mountain environment has endured scouring by glacier, as massive ice floes carved through glens, breaking off into massive bergs as they entered the Hebridean seas. They left behind a landscape sculpted into the striking and sometimes fragile environment we currently witness. Continually subject to elemental ravages, the seemingly immovable rock of the uplands is progressively reduced to coastal sands, then attacked by ferocious Atlantic storms. The land and seascape of the NorthWest Highlands is testament to the combination of the elements that assault the coast in a continuous cycle of erosion and reformation. This is the journey offering an inescapable attraction for the photographer and visitor to these parts.”
The extreme climatic conditions shaping the landscape of the Western Isles are explored by Ken Bryan on his own visual journey, which he prefers to let speak for itself in his photography. A few words suffice;
“Mountains, seas, time and tide but most of all the weather. This is the starting point for the landscape I love. When all of these things work in harmony, they produce not only the arresting view but a more intimate landscape under our very feet.”
If the bigger picture resulting from dramatic weather systems is all around us, a different viewpoint is available in miniature. Coastal pools and shoreline rock architecture offer a close up view of climatic sculptures. Phil Gorton works close into his subject matter.
“ I like to concentrate the eye on the colours and shapes in miniature environments, visual segments from a typically water eroded landscape. ‘Wash Day’ and ‘Rock Island Line’ are small visual pieces from a larger West Coast topography. ‘Fairy Dell’ typifies a coastal rock platform battered into submission by time and tide.”
Completing Phil’s Rocks and Sands images is ‘Red on Charcoal’ where a large rock piece is stranded on a tidal run off as differing shades of rock silt are washed to the sea, the final visual step at the end of the long journey.
APRIL 2010 - NEWSLETTER
The Gallery has been awarded 4 stars by Visit Scotland as an Arts Venue.
MARCH 2010 - NEWSLETTER
The Gallery can now accept payment via Visa, Maestro, Mastercard and Solo debit cards.
FEBRUARY 2010 - NEWSLETTER
The Gallery opened on February the 21st 2010 with a mixed show of sculpture, prints, painting and photography. The day was crisp and frosty with a quicksilver quality of light outside, augmenting the luminosity of the work inside.
On the dot visitors appeared from all parts, as far afield as St Andrews. The first visitor, Margaret, lived in the main farmhouse over 50 years ago and remembers the Gallery as it was then, the boiler house and chaumer ( Buchan word, meaning, farm workers sleeping quarters). The youngest visitor of 3 months obligingly remained contentedly asleep.
Two artists from the Isle of Skye were able to be present throughout the day, available for questions and comment.
Read for yourself some of the feedback we have had;
VISITORS’ VIEWS
“A wise woman I know talks about the importance of connection in our lives. She means the state of being in relationship, one with another, both giving and taking, being enhanced by that connection.
As I spent a light-filled afternoon in the Airt Gallery, surrounded by the buzz of people interested in meeting each other and looking at the art displayed on the walls, I thought of her. The spirit of connection is implicit in what the gallery seeks to do: in showing work created by artists living in the Highlands, inspired by that landscape, it affirms the connection between man and his environment. In gathering for the inaugural exhibition of the gallery, we too affirmed our sense of connection to that environment and to each other:
The joyful boy who ran around the snowy garden in his tee-shirt, disdaining the sparkling cold and peeped through the windows at the mingling inside.
The children bent over the ice-covered pond, seeking to leave their own impression.
The baby carried through the gathering in the ‘infant gallery’.
The voices raised in greeting, in excitement and in appreciation.”
Sandra
“ although it looks quite a small building it hold a large number of pictures”
Gill
“ I like the mixture of media with paintings next to photographs next to prints next to sculpture”
Margaret
ARTIST’S ANGLE
This was my first showing of West Coast inspired images in an East Coast gallery and it proved a very interesting afternoon. Removing the west coast geological and geographical points of reference allowed discussion with viewers of the solely abstract nature of the image with little bias of location. The conversations were thus very different from those I have at home on the west coast. Comments were made of the tranquility of the subject in Lonesome Blues and the colour combinations of Rock Candy. It was good to discuss and answer questions in the Airt Gallery about the true abstraction that is in all of my work when that abstraction is removed from the physical presence of the inspiration.