Joyce Gunn Cairns & Gillian Murray / Helen Michie Shoreline / Spring Show

About

Joyce Gunn-Cairns MBE is a multi-award winning artist who has gained national recognition for her portraits of famous writers.  Described by Duncan MacMillan (Scotsman) as one of ‘of Scotland's finest painters’, Gunn Cairns trained in painting and drawing at Edinburgh College of Art. Her expressive figurative paintings are collected internationally. Nine of her works are in the permanent collection of Scotland’s National Portrait Gallery and in 2004, she was awarded an MBE for services to the arts. Also, exhibited in the main hall is work by Gillian Murray, an accomplished printmaker who lives and works in Edinburgh. She studied Fine Art (Printmaking) at Aberdeen’s Gray’s School of Art and thereafter, worked at Edinburgh College of Art running their printmaking department. ‘Line’ is of prime importance in Murray’s representation of the remote Scottish landscape. “The ‘line’ . . . is the link between me physically being in a place drawing, to it appearing in my final screenprint. It is easy to be immersed in the process of printmaking.  Making layers, trying to get the colours just right and mixing subtle blends all add to the anticipation in revealing the final image from the press.  It is this combination of method and intuitiveness that keeps me fascinated by the printmaking medium”.

In the White Gallery, Helen Michie a local artist from Lochaber, presents a body of work, entitled ‘Shoreline’. Inspired by the local coastline, Michie combines raku, stoneware and mixed-media paintings to evoke the strength, fragility and impermanence of the shoreline. The natural environment is not only the inspiration behind Michie’s work but instrumental in creating it. Whether it’s the natural clay employed in her stoneware or the process of raku smoke-firing in an outdoor kiln, nature is inherent in her art.  Helen Michie studied ceramics at Aberdeen Gray’s School of Art and exhibits regularly with Resipole Studios.