The Edinburgh Art Fair runs from 20th - 22nd September 2024
I will be exhibiting there alongside David Short from our art collective, Eleven Painters.
The Edinburgh Art Fair’s theme this year is Agora, or community, and my painting “A Break In The Clouds: John Muir Beach” has been selected as one of the artworks that represents that. Here is the article I wrote for them about it:
“I spent lockdown homeschooling my three children, fortunate to be furloughed from my job.
As I struggled through helping with my eldest son with maths and computing science exams, and did increasing amount of more enjoyable art projects with my younger boys, I found myself returning more and more often to this question: “what would have happened if I had gone to art school instead of university…could I have become an artist? What might have been?”
I had already begun a few classes at Leith School of Art in Edinburgh, but as with many other people, lockdown proved a pivotal turning point in my life; a moment for reassessment and a change of direction. I didn’t want my dream of being an artist to be something I’d always regret not doing.
As soon as some of the restrictions were lifted, our first trip out of Edinburgh was to a beach in East Lothian. It was a magical day, made all the more so by the amount of time we’d had to spend at home. Seeing the joy of being in the windswept Scottish outdoors on my childrens’ and husband’s faces is a memory I will always treasure.
There must have been a violent storm out at sea in the previous days as the sand was littered with debris, like lobster and crab claws, and the weather itself was still realigning: blue skies one minute, dark thunderous clouds the next, then rainbows or fierce wind. We all loved it so, so much. My little family, my community, with this majestic beach all to ourselves.
It’s an image I have returned to paint many times over the years, first at classes at Leith School of Art, and then subsequently for gallery exhibitions with my art collective, Eleven Painters, which has become another community for me.
We all met at LSA, keen amateur artists initially all with very different styles of art. Over the years since the pandemic we’ve not only formed close connections but gone on to great success exhibiting together at Dundas Street Gallery, the Borders Art Fair and this year again at the Edinburgh Art Fair.
I couldn’t have fulfilled my dream of becoming a full time professional artist without both my communities: my family and Eleven Painters.”
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