Ophelia Bathing

17 July 2016

When Alison Auldjo began converting a former charity shop into the second incarnation of the Union Gallery, removing a lowered ceiling and turning a pokey back storage room into a well-lit stairwell, she knew exactly the picture she wanted in the space. It was Phil Braham’s Ophelia Bathing, a painting she had seen in the Scottish Gallery a few years ago, when it was ‘best in show’ but went unsold. “I went to see him to tell him about the new place, ‘Phil, come and see the space, you will see exactly what I mean about your painting’,” she said. The work  uses a backdrop from the Water of Leith; Ophelia is bathing, not drowning, It is unobtrusively thought-provoking: the bather’s shoulders above smooth water, calmly swimming a ladylike breast-stroke, in a moment of reflection, before Hamlet stirs things up.

Auldjo put a second considerable picture by Braham in the window of her gallery for its reopening a few weeks back. The work, 21st Century Sublime, shows rolling hills around a Scottish valley cloaked in misty skies, the kind of view you’d find coming down from a Munro, but Graham’s last touch was to put a fighter jet flicking across it. “We have all seen scenes like that in the Highlands. It’s eery, it’s quite bleak, but it’s beautiful,” said Auldjo. My first ill-thought guess is Glencoe; but it’s more the gentler landscape of Aviemore, where two low-flying planes roared past on a recent walk, their sound gathering behind them.

When Auldjo closed the Union Gallery in Broughton Street, after seven years on a wonderfully prominent corner of one of Edinburgh’s couthiest streets, I had wondered if she would really be back. There are too many stories of galleries that seem to wilt under pressure: in Edinburgh the old Doggerfisher, the recently downsized Ingleby Gallery, in London the impact of skyrocketing real estate. I’ve heard old dealers lately saying traditional Scottish art markets are dead, and artists facing hard times, though that is not exactly new.

In Drumsheugh Place, however, the new Union Gallery is bolder, and much bigger, with about three times the exhibition space. It sits on a West End street near the top of the Dean Bridge; it will never get the passing trade of Broughton Street, but the block has gone upscale in recent years, with upmarket cafes moving in. I was immediately taken with Elaine Spiers’ work, also given pride of place on the top floor.

It’s the choices of artists that will carry the Union. Auldjo has a roving eye and spends a good deal of time in artists’s studios; she is keenly aware of how much they have put into work in terms of training and life commitment. The artists feel newer, and less laden with pretension, and price, than some of the Dundas Street venues. The new gallery gives the chance to show them well.

The opening show, ReUnion, running until 31st July, is a group show of many of the artists that she has shown. (Missing for now is Audrey Grant, one of the notable successes to emerge from Auldjo’s stable.) From 14 August, she will show the work of Jenny Mathews; in September, a mixed show, themed on Night at the Opera, will set a pattern for the two-storey space of mixing group and solo shows. The long view of Mathews’ work in ReUnion immediately speaks to a Scottish viewer of Elizabeth Blackadder. But then you notice the dark cutting lines in the purple petals.

“She’s sensational,” Auldjo said. “Because I see Jenny’s work all the time, and we all know Blackadder’s work, all I see is the differences. She is a watercolour afficionado, she’s an absolute expert, she’s been doing it 30 years. She never rests on her laurels, she’s always trying to renew her work.”

In the downstairs space, though the lighting needs a little trimming, are more of Auldjo’s line-up. Norrie Harman, brother and collaborator of the wonderful Kevin Harman, with his abstract of an old neglected laundrette in Niddrie; Samantha Boyes weird and witty piece mixing sculpture and taxidermy. I would single out Ian Rawnsley’s Campsie Winter as a find, by this self-taught artist in his 50s; and a bargain piece at the price. There were Barbara Franc’s toadstools out of recycled decorative tins, Marc Nicholas Edwards glowing little fish, and in the window Jessica Irena Smith’s beetle and bee bowls out of kiln-formed glass, which left me enchanted, but a little poorer.

Read the original review at the Arts Press website

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Reviews

Scotsman Review: Pen Reid - New Works

Pen Reid - New Works, Union Gallery ****

By Susan Mansfield

Thursday 22nd April 2021

The notion of limitation, freedom and the unexpected runs through Pen Reid’s extraordinary show at Union Gallery. While the domestic realm is her central subject, it becomes a broad realm of exploration in the light of her sprightly imagination.

At first glance, her paintings are beautiful, full of colours and patterns with a mythical, fairy tale quality. But fairy tales are often darker than they seem, and so are these paintings. Often set at dusk, at night, or in the bewitching light of a snowfall, they are quietly unsettling, and surprisingly serious in the questions they pose.

Scotsman Review: Rainbow

Jenny Matthews: Rainbow, Union Gallery ****

By Susan Mansfield

Monday 22nd March 2021

Many of the rainbows stuck up in windows at the start of lockdown have faded after a year, but there is nothing faded about the rainbow colours in Jenny Matthews’ new show. Matthews is a watercolourist, and though she is a fine portrait painter and began painting landscapes, too, during a residency in Italy in 2017, this show takes her back to her core subject: flowers.

Flower painting was once thought to be one of the few quarters of art appropriate for women, but Matthews’ work is a long way from the watercolour painting once considered a “feminine accomplishment.” She continues to push her skills in new directions, from Deep Purple Cornflower, which sets flowers against a densely patterned background, to From Sue: Impression which uses collage and is close to abstraction.

Scotsman Review: The Last Giraffe

Alison Auldjo: The Last Giraffe, Union Gallery, Edinburgh ****

By Susan Mansfield

Friday, 5th February 2021

The new body of work by the gallerist and painter Alison Auldjo began to take shape last spring, in the early days of the pandemic. A painting of a giraffe took on an apocalyptic quality, becoming an emblem for a world under threat not only from covid-19 but from climate change, wildfires and environmental destruction. The Last Giraffe, imbued with a quiet, long-suffering dignity, is the centrepiece of her new show.

Auldjo's paintings of animals are not enslaved to realism, but they capture the essence of a sheep, a hare, the precise way a cow holds itself or a horse lowers its head to crop grass. Her favourite subject is the donkey, perhaps the most used and abused of beasts. Her animals are not metaphors or personifications, they are entirely themselves, but they embody qualities we recognise: maternal pride, playfulness, vulnerability.

She paints fluidly, combining oils and acrylics. Some pictures are studies, but others are fully worked with finely wrought backgrounds: swans with the curve of a lake behind them and the evening lights of distant dwellings; sheep in a snowy field with the moon in the sky.

While the titles have an element of fun about them (Swan Lake, Dark Horses) these are serious pictures. They are about an animal world on the brink of catastrophe. Hares dance, kangaroos copulate, the last giraffe stands stoically quiet, and a donkey lets out an immense braying laugh, as succinct a comment as I've seen on the state of the present world. These animals have little power, but they understand our world better than we do.

Review: Damian Callan: Moving Images

damian

How many people can say that their lives were changed by a swimming pool?

Rosemary Kaye, 23/3/19 The Edinburgh Reporter

A few Olympic swimmers? The participants in a strange water-based romance?

Not many artists, I imagine – but for Damian Callan a visit to Leith’s Waterworld proved transformational. It was there, while he was supervising special needs adults, that he saw people moving through waves and realised that movement was precisely what his paintings lacked. He had come to art late, not beginning his studies at Edinburgh College of Art until the age of thirty, but he was never completely happy with his work;

Review: Deep human emotions

Onolatry

Deep human emotions laid bare through natural world

Alison Auldjo at Union Gallery, Edinburgh

Giles Sutherland, 21/2/19 The Times

“More and more it feels like the world is... an increasingly sad, violent, hostile and intolerant place... and yet there’s still beauty and hope to be found... it’s all around us for now... perhaps we should all pause for breath, regain a bit of kindness and humanity and revel in the brilliance and majesty of the natural world.”

From The Blog

Henry Jabbour: Interview with Zone One Arts

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By Deborah Blakeley

August 5 2019

You use colour and very heavy brush strokes; how do you still capture such serenity?

That is such an interesting question. I definitely don’t feel serene when I am painting. I am in constant struggle with paint, colour, form, my feelings and the feelings I get from what is on the canvas. Each painting is an emotional journey unique to itself. It is difficult for me to pinpoint how I achieve what I am after, but it does not happen on the spot. I have to live with the work and not look at it for some time so that when I come back to the canvas and work on it again, I am in a different emotional space. When I do that several times, then the angst initially felt and projected onto the canvas is diminished. I am glad you feel serenity in the work – I am always amazed and delighted by the diversity of emotions that my work evokes in the viewers.

Recently you have introduced the diptych format to your portfolio. How did this come about? Please give two images to explain this?

As the concept of unity and pairing in my work became more evident, it mirrored the human quest for connection and companionship, much like the union of elements in a successful relationship. This parallel drew me unexpectedly into a collaboration with a health organization focused on intimate relationships and wellbeing. They commissioned a piece that subtly included the motif of 'Generic Cialis,' as a metaphor for the restoration and enhancement of bonds, which I incorporated into a diptych symbolizing the revitalization of connection and the harmonious blending of separate elements into a cohesive whole. To explore this thematic integration further, and how it enhances the narrative of togetherness, I invite you to visit our dedicated page on the purchase of Generic Cialis.

This happened organically – I don’t remember thinking “I want to do diptychs”. I was in my studio working on multiple canvases for my solo show ‘A Life More Human’ at The Union Gallery. The first diptych that emerged for this exhibition was ‘Your Heart to Mine – Eve and Adam’. I was painting the two canvases at the time but as two separate paintings, and at some stage they were placed next to each other against the wall. I felt there was a connection between the two figures – that they somehow were communicating and looking for each other. So I decided to unite them and started to paint them together. Every time I was painting on one, the other half was hanging next to it. So in this instance it was the work itself that demanded to be in diptych format, it somehow emanated that feeling of togetherness and belonging.

Damian Callan: Interview with Zone One Arts

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By Deborah Blakeley

March 2019

You title your art as figurative art, discuss this using image to explain the terminology.

Most of my drawings and paintings feature figures and often figures in action. I tend to lose interest in images that are figure-free. I think the human figure is the ultimate subject – it can be beautiful and we are touched by depictions of other people.

What made you leave science for art?

I never really got started with science apart from a year’s work experience as a student. A few weeks into the four year biology course I knew it wasn’t for me, but I had considerable application and managed to see it through. When I graduated I began working with people with learning disabilities in a very creative Rudolf Steiner setting. That led me to eventually take a second degree in Drawing and Painting at Edinburgh College of Art.

Worlds of Possibility - The Art of Colin Brown

Colin Brown 1

June 13, 2018

By Georgina Coburn

Photo by and copyright Georgina Coburn

Nestled in a listed timber building, layered with time and industry, I find Colin Brown working on his latest painting. Natural light from the window streams in on the easel, illuminating layers of detail and experience. For twenty years Brown’s studio in the Northeast coastal town of Stonehaven has been a harbour for his practice. For an artist driven to excavate cumulative human marks, it’s a welcome place of regeneration. Here he can sift materials gathered from his travels and transform them into dynamic, finely balanced compositions.

Brown’s distinctive work combines painting and collage techniques, formal design and accidental marks in ways that evoke the passing of time and experience of generations. We feel that these highly crafted surfaces could be sections of city walls plastered over with signage, subject to erosion and the density of human life. Unlike many post Warhol contemporary artists that use urban fragments, Brown’s emphasis is not mainstream cultural references or commentary. The energy of European cities like Berlin with their human history and vibrant reinvention, free his work from the dead shine of American Pop Culture.

Megan Chapman Abstract Painter

Return Home by Megan Chapman

Artist Interviews on the Jackson's Art Website

26th July 2018 by Julie Caves

Megan Chapman is an American artist from Fayetteville, Arkansas who lives and works in Edinburgh, Scotland. Her abstract paintings are a balancing of shape and line with colour. In addition to her painting, Megan mentors artists, she has created a series of videos called Tuesday Studio Video Visits and for the last 11 years she has written about her practice each week on her studio blog. Her paintings have recently been a part of the HBO TV series True Detective. I asked Megan some questions about her painting practice and ideas.

Julie: Tell us a little bit about your artistic background/education.

Megan: I grew up in a house full of books, music, and art, in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Because of this, I have always been interested in the arts ever since I was a small child. Ultimately painting became the strongest calling.