Reinventing...in images

This beautiful XVII century building hosted an encounter between Scottish and Spanish art.



The exibition proved that, despite the artists’ diverse cultural
background and geographical distance, a visual vocabulary can sometimes meet halfway.
Shoes, horses, bulls, dancers, musicians, castles...were some of the emblematic and powerful images that seem to survive the passing of time but are continually reinvented and reinterpreted through art.

It's all about bulls...reinvented.

Image on left: "Matador" by Elise Chisholm


"We love Elise’s “animal-friendly” bullfighting scenes. They still contain this emblematic, culturally-charged icon of Spanish culture, but animal and human are depicted in a much more balanced way than in traditional bullfighting scenes.
Bulls have always been present in Spanish art. From the bulls painted by pre-historic “artists” in The Altamira Caves, in Northern Spain; to those depicted by Goya; or Picasso’s Guernica and The Bull. Not to mention the oversized bulls logos of a well-known sherry brand, looming on the horizon of Spanish hills (as featured so memorably in Bigas Luna’s Jamón Jamón)
But these new take on an all familiar subject not only reflects the general British sensibility on the theme; but also an emerging voice among a generation of younger Spaniards who, while being proud of bulls, are not so proud of bullfighting"

Image above: "Bull Run" by Elise Chisholm.

We wrote this only 2 months before bull-fighting was forbidden in Barcelona as the result of public vote...

Below, the beautiful hand-painted ceiling of the exhibition space






In the center of the table, carnations and thystles representing the Spanish-Scottish connection.

And below, the view from the building

onto the Royal Mile

Easter 2010: Reinventing Cultural Iconography

Image left: "Quijote" by Enrique Cid


Between Monday 29th of March and Sunday 4th of April , we held an exhibition at The Gladstone Land Gallery, in the Royal Mile, Edinburgh, with the collaboration of the Spanish Consulate in Edinburgh.

Below: "Summer Bull" by Adriana Sanchez.


The newsletter/invitation to the private preview, read like this:

Behind Every Shoe lies a Human Truth...
Our minds work with images, and images precede words. That’s why Dr. Iain R. Edgar, who lectures at Durham University, started using a pioneer research methodology to interview people. “Imagework” encourages subjects to use their imagination and create visual images about different situations. This allows them to engage the right side of their brain; where our values, perceptions and unconscious associations reside.

As a research methodology it has proven to be highly successful. However, it is one of his collateral findings that resonate within the background of this exhibition. He realised that as humans we share a range of visual images irrespective of our individual experience. As if we were all equipped with a visual vocabulary that has been forged over aeons of evolution. It is what anthropologists’ study in relation to myths and psychoanalysts use to interpret our dreams and other unconscious expressions of our minds.

As an example, he found that train journeys were common metaphors for “transit”, “process”, “movement” and “growth”. These and other images remind us that, despite diversity of life in a complex world, we are all rooted in a common place: by the human condition.

In the exhibition, hosted in a beautiful 17th Century Merchant’s House, there are bulls as perceived by Scottish artists and reinterpreted by Spanish ones since Goya. It offers an interesting sample of culturally meaningful references that will expose difference and commonality.

What lies beyond Rosie Newman’s and Marta Ratti’s fascination with shoes, might be what they both associate with them: their childhood, their kids’ early steps, or growth, perhaps.
But what fascinates us, is what all those images tell. That despite all our differences and distances, there is a common land for humankind, where we can be closer, even in subconscious ways.

And to prove it…here is a shoe.


Image: "Ballerina Shoes" by Marta Ratti

I would like to thank Mr. Federico Palomera, Spanish Consul in Edinburgh, and Professor Iain R. Edgar, who came all the way from Durham, for their attendance to our private preview.

"Love of Art": Newsletter & Exhibition

By the end of January 2010 we sent this newsletter announcing the launch of our "Love of Art" exhibition on the 14th of February.
It was also the first Newsletter of 2010:

"Some say that this will be a year for learning...
and finding some truths about ourselves, and that, under the influx of Saturn, those lessons will come at a price.
X-Factor finalist Joe was singing “it’s not about getting there quickly, but only about getting there” again and again over Christmas and so, I adopted learning and hard work as my New Year resolutions.
Now, with St Valentines round the corner I’ve remembered that I recently asked someone very close about his love success, and he said…”I’ve learnt to be wary of anything that comes too easily and doesn’t involve hard work”.

Having heard friends many times mention “hard work” when talking about difficult relationships, his words provided a different perspective on the term and I thought that in art, as in love, the Lady Gaga’s “wanting everything as long as it’s free” can only leads us to a “bad romance”. That both, love and art, need a combination of vision and determination, attraction, but also hard work.

So after the right hand side of the brain has done its part, provided the intuition and inspiration; it’s time for the left hand side to come into action and add a plan. Here comes finding the materials, the drive and the time to solve the gap between ideal and material. Or as Michael Bubble would sing it: “to work to work it out”. In other words, to overcome the distance between platonic and real, and in doing so, to deal with the limitations of it all because, as Anne Klauser says, “who wants to create nothing but perfection, creates nothing”.

But then, for those who dare to take their chances, sometimes reality goes beyond fiction.
Last Sunday I witnessed a truly special moment when a friend sang Jason Mraz’s “I’m Yours” to his wife in their first anniversary.
The moment still resonates in my memory and so this Sunday, whatever lessons Saturn’s got lined up for the year ahead, I’ll be whistling, as the song goes, that “it might be again my turn to win some…or learn some”.
Join us this Sunday, St Valentines’ Day, to celebrate our artists’ hard work and a love of art!

Presenting Sophie Hamiltons’s quirky retro illustrations and Conchita Machlaughan’s advance of a Scottish-Spanish affair that will culminate in an Easter Exhibition.

Artmag Feb - March 2010

December 09 Newsletter: I would wish you a white Christmas...

...but white has never been my colour.
I never understood why in the Spanish IT consultancy where I used to work, we called those drafts with new ideas “white papers”. As if a fresh start wasn’t hard enough; facing a blank page (or canvas) called “white” emphasises that terrifying moment before anything takes place. The moment of nothing, the empty space, what is yet not there.
The whole idea of whiteness, in relation to creation, is just off putting.

Instead, I would like to focus on what is about to happen. And call them simply “ideas papers”, or “butterfly papers”, to encourage those ideas to fly. Or maybe, “dream papers” to bring in the lightness of what doesn’t necessarily have the pretension to become real. Or, better still, I’d call them “recycled papers” not because of their ecological value, but to stress the idea that pure originality doesn’t exist; that any new creation is actually re-creation and re-elaboration, drawing inspiration from the past.

So, while the “white paper” seems to be detached from the world, like an orphan, a beginning and an end in itself; bullying the shaking author with the written version of “if what you are about to say is not more beautiful than the silence, do not say it”; the recycled paper is warmly received into the world. It assumes its tiny place into the Universe, it puts the writer in their place and lightens up the burden of having to take that small but huge step of …CREATION.

And while the “white paper” gives you only the one chance, and demands a line at a time to make a perfect final piece; the recycled paper invites you to stain it, cross it out and, often, go back to the beginning and start anew. It is part of its circular charm, as mastered by outstanding creators like Picasso, who used to do dozens of drafts before arriving at a masterpiece.

So, like an artist friend who uses only second hand canvasses, I now try to use anything but white paper. I use the back of old shopping lists and bills. Outdated post-its and “to-do” lists: “lived paper” that is already part of the cycle. Borrowed paper or adopted paper, humble, unpretentious paper…even forgotten paper.

But no, never white paper.
So, when time comes, let me wish you a colourful Christmas instead!



The new exhibition at Joseph Pearce's Bar presented the warm, Mediterranean palette of artist Fee Dickson.

Artmag Dec 09

In Christmas 09 Artmag published the suplement "Buy Art for Christmas" which featured one of Kate Lloyd's solder & acrylics fish.

Autumn 09 Newsletter & New Exhibition

In October 2009 we sent this newsletter inviting everyone to attend the private preview of our new exhibiton on Sunday 11th:

Okay!! ...So it was not the summer that we all had expected. The crows were wrong, wrong, wrong. And so was the Met Office, which had forecasted a warm and dry summer.
Instead of a “BBQ summer” with temperatures above 30, it turned out to be wetter than average. In fact, there were 42 wet days with Dumfries and Galloway, home to Edwin Slater, one of our regular artists, registering its wettest August since rainfall records began, back in 1914.

But then, who wants predictions when it is often unexpected things that make life exciting and make us smile? As Sarah Duncan says, there is nothing like accidentally putting a dry-clean only top into the wash and discovering it comes out perfectly, or spotting a new green shoot in a plant you thought was done for. For me it was finding that my Spanish cooking book does not have the recipe for “Tortilla de Patatas” as surely, if you are Spanish, you are expected to know how to cook it from birth!, or finding a huge feather in the toilet of an airplane (during my last easyjet flight to Madrid).

Yes, things are more appreciated when you don’t expect them at all, when they are out of context. Like having a brilliant idea while waiting for the bus, or having a shower. Apparently proximity to water is very inspiring, says Henriette Anne Klauser. It’s something to do with the negative ions as they stimulate brain activity associated to creativity.
So be pleased for the rain.

I wonder whether this has something to do with the amount of talent in these wet-lands which exceeds the reservoirs of galleries and has flooded cafes and restaurants near you…to get you by surprise.
Just like a warm sunny day at the end of September when you were getting ready for more rain.

Join us this coming Sunday to see what our artists have been up to during all those 504 hours of inspiration and tons of negative ions.



Below: "The Auld Kirk", by Edwin Slater, mixed media.