Helen Ramsey
I take inspiration from the wonderful Scottish landscope around me, mushrooms, and my cat.
I grew up in Hong Kong, where I drew incessantly as a child. Though my professional life has led me into medicine, art has always been a quiet constant, giving me space to slow down, observe, and imagine.
Since moving to Aberdeen to live with my husband, I have found new inspiration in hiking, foraging, and sea-swimming. When work took me to different parts of Scotland, I have been deeply moved by its beauty. I try to communicate the sense of wonder I feel in nature through my art.
Over the years, my practice has evolved from coloured pencil drawings to my current use of mixed media, which include ink, watercolours, gouache, and acrylic pens.
Corri Black
http://facebook.com/pathstoart
I’m an artist based in rural Aberdeenshire, near Insch.
As a young child I would lose myself for hours, sketching and painting the characters and places in the books I read. Science took me in a different direction professionally but I always returned to art as a way to still my mind, connect and explore my relationship to places and emotions.
After my husband died, painting helped me – initially to lose myself, then to start to see in colour and depth again and now to explore how the layers of landscape hold memories of time. The passing of time has become distorted – infinitely elastic as it stretches out into possibilities and snaps back to absence.
Every painting begins with movement through the landscape. I paint in watercolour because of the quiet connection it helps me form with the landscape – exploring the layers of memory held there: from ancient geology to the personal moments we create within it.
Courtney Szabo
I am an acrylic landscape painter. My work is largely inspired by hiking the Munros here in Scotland, and other exploring and adventure. I use a lot of colour in my work, and have an impressionism style of painting. Through my paintings, I aim to capture the feeling of being out exploring, the joy it brings me through my extensive use of colour, and the feeling of being in another world by experimenting with dimensions and an abstract realism approach that can be seen in my more recent paintings.
In 2019, I graduated from DJCAD in Dundee with a BA(Hons) Degree in Contemporary Art Practice. Through my time at University, I explored large-scale abstract work. I took a few years off painting, and since being back I truly feel I am creating what I love now.
To view my full gallery: http://www.courtneyszaboart.com
I am also on social media @courtszaboart
Katherine Rae
http://www.artbykatherine.co.uk
I am an artist based in Oldmeldrum, Aberdeenshire. I originally graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 1996 with a degree in woven textiles. I moved into the field of interior design and education for many years before returning to my love of painting around 2019. I now work from my studio at home surrounded by our beautiful landscape.
I am constantly sourcing inspiration, every dog walk or trip to the coast here in the north east of Scotland brings with it new images and colours. My work varies from small abstract studies of colour and line to larger more sweeping canvasses of skies, fields and seas. I have recently been looking into the history of our coast through its lighthouses, shipwrecks and old abandoned buildings and look forward to exploring this further in new works this year. I primarily work in acrylics, pastel and charcoal which allow me to explore my enthusiasm for colour and line.
To get a better insight into my studio practise please watch the film via the link below!
Eilidh Gabureanu
Informed by man’s relationship with the rural highlands of Scotland, my practice is an exploration of my continued experiences within the Cairngorms and Highlands. With particular focus on the role of Bothies within the Scottish landscape and rural communities, I create paintings that explore the experience of a place and capture a memory or moment, drawing attention to the uncultivated nature that surrounds us. My work attempts to preserve those experiences by expressing the characteristics of my journeys endured over the years.
These small, intimate paintings are formed out of personal memories or appropriated secondary source material that relates to personal and collective experiences in the Scottish Landscape.
Cristina Casarin
I am a contemporary abstract artist working primarily with mixed media on wooden panels. My practice is shaped by the cultural and visual influences of Venice, where I was born, and of London and Paris, where I lived and developed my artistic research. I have been based in Aberdeen, Scotland for several years, where the landscape and atmosphere have further influenced my creative process. Inspired by Arte Materica, I build textured, layered surfaces through multiple applications of colour, allowing the material to speak through its rawness and imperfections. I explore the expressive potential of matter and form, inviting the viewer into a tactile and emotional experience.
Alongside my studio practice, I integrate art into the field of sustainable marketing, using visual language as a powerful tool to communicate values, inspire reflection, and foster meaningful engagement. I believe that art has the unique ability to make abstract concepts tangible, creating emotional connections that can support cultural and ecological transformation.
c.cristinacasarin@gmail.com
+447877684179
+393802030392
Sue Savege
I am an artist inspired by wild places and big adventures
Originally a Sculpture graduate, but smitten early on by the climbing bug I subsequently spent my career as a climber, mountaineer, guide and environmentalist. During this time, I was privileged to work in some of the most beautiful, remote and inspiring mountain ranges in the world.
Now I am returned to the art world, I find ways to express that deep awe and wonder found in our wild and beautiful places, through paint, print and artists’ books. The landscapes of mountains, rock and ice provide an endless source of inspiration for my work.
My work
Journeying is a big part of my practice. In the past, I’ve had the privilege of spending many months at a time living on the ice, crossing ice caps, or camping at high altitude traversing remote mountain ranges. Many of my pieces describe not just a single moment but the experience of travelling through land, time and space.
I like to immerse myself in a place before I start a piece of work, I walk it, touch it, smell it, sit in it, get to know its tiniest details, and experience its grandeur. I am fascinated by the way that a mountainside can seem, both intimate and cosy, and yet at the same time vast, infinite and awesome. In my work I like to play with ideas of time, space, and scale, sometimes working on small handheld objects, designed to be touched and felt, and sometimes creating large luminous paintings.
Living in the Northeast of Scotland with the Cairngorm mountains on my doorstep, rock, ice, wind and weather, are part of my daily experiences. All my work starts with time spent out running, climbing or skiing in the mountains. I carry with me a small sketchbook and a selection of drawing materials and can often be found tucked behind a boulder attempting to capture the moment. Back in the studio, I work in a variety of media, trying best to find the most appropriate response to the landscapes and habitats experienced.
Many of the landscapes and environments I have experienced on my travels are changing rapidly and, in my work, I hope to enable others to witness and understand the impacts of our lives and lifestyles on this, our one and only planet.
Volha Druhakova
While working as an architect following my Master of Architecture degree, I have completed a printmaking course at Gray’s School of Art and set up a creative studio Outpost Prints.
My work is inspired by remote places and the concept of escape, whether real or imaginary. This could involve journeying into the wilderness, contemplating a flower, or delving into the realm of abstraction. The initial idea always revolves around transcending the reality of the subject – not too much, but just enough to envision the possibility of something otherworldly. I strive to convey an expression that captures the interplay of light and shadow, evoking a sense of movement and following the form.
A lot of my work is focused on mountains, particularly the Highlands of Scotland. These sculptural and flowing landscapes of immense age, a frozen movement of the Earth itself, solid but also very fluid and changing with the seasons, weather, and particularly light, give me endless inspiration. My process involves walking far into that landscape, often on multiday trips, collecting images and sketches on location, and finalizing the work in the studio.
In printmaking, I gravitate towards bold lines, high contrast, and a stylized form of expression. I work mostly using relief techniques (linocut and woodcut), but I particularly enjoy the process of making monotype/mixed media pieces, seeking spontaneity and unexpected results. Regardless of the chosen medium and mode of expression, I aim to allow the image to evolve organically, often leading to outcomes that differ from my initial intentions.
Ellie McAllan
Gray’s School of Art Fine Art – Painting Graduate.
Through my practice, I examine our collective nostalgia for domestic spaces, specifically homes in Aberdeen, and the careful rituals we perform to preserve what matters. I’m drawn to the objects we choose to keep close, the ones we dust weekly and position just so—each item a small monument to memory and belonging.
My work considers how we age alongside our cherished possessions, how we become curators of our own histories through the things we choose to repair, protect, and pass down. These familiar patterns and preserved objects speak to a universal longing for warmth and connection, even as they tell deeply personal stories about care, time, and the spaces we call home.
John Gerrie
Website http://JohnGerrie.co.uk
I am John Gerrie a Scottish watercolour artist from Aberdeen.
My love for art began during my school years, where I first explored creativity through drawing and painting. Although life led me down a different path as a chartered surveyor with architectural experience, sketching and detailed drawings remained a part of my professional life, quietly nurturing my artistic foundation.
In 2017, upon retiring, Alison encouraged me to join a local art class. Within just a few months, I completed my first watercolour—a painting of the iconic Neuschwanstein Castle. This marked the beginning of a new chapter where my architectural background seamlessly blended with my artistic pursuits.
Today, I specialize in watercolours, a medium both challenging and rewarding. My work reflects a love for detail and includes a range of subjects: historic buildings, landscapes, seascapes, village scenes, and intricate pen-and-ink combinations.
I also take great joy in creating commissioned pieces, collaborating with clients to craft unique artworks that hold personal meaning and bring lasting joy.
Explore my collection, and discover the stories told through every brushstroke.
Laura Nicholson
Joining the Aberdeen Artist’s Society in 2024 marked a significant step in my artistic journey. My professional life for the last twenty plus years has been in the world of sustainable cosmetics development, drawing on my background as a trained makeup artist. This experience honed my understanding of colour, texture, and design, which now informs my artistic practice.
Returning to my passion for art, I focus on minimalist abstraction, taking inspiration from the harmonious colour palettes of the sea and sky. Working primarily with acrylics and mixed media, I aim to create peaceful, minimalist works that invite reflection and a sense of calm.
My work is currently available to view at Frauhaus Gallery, 33 Chattan Place, Aberdeen, AB10 6RB.
Follow my creative journey on Instagram – nicholson_studio_uk
Karen Welding
07715550727
I graduated from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in Dundee with a Bdes (hons) in constructed textiles in 1995. I have always enjoyed sketching and working with wool and threads, but in the past couple of years, I have begun to explore painting.
I love texture and bright colours and seem to be drawn more to landscape scenes that are loosely based on Scottish cities and coastal harbours. I like to include adventurous Lowry inspired stick figures exploring their environment and having fun.
I spent my early years living abroad in Oman and Borneo and spent a few years travelling around Australia in my 20s. I’ve always been interested in travel and different cultures and colourful scenery from around the world. I’m now lucky enough to be working as a full-time artist and feel incredibly grateful to be able to do this. I like to create eye-catching work that is fun, bright, colourful, and that will stand out and will make others hopefully feel happy too.
Donnie Ross
Dr. Donnie Ross has been an active member of Aberdeen Artists Society for 40 years, serving as President in 1990-92 and 2021-23. He was a founder-member of Grampian Hospitals Arts Trust, which he chaired for 10 years. He has been a flamenco guitarist (El Escocés) in a South London Chinese Restaurant and in a Stockholm nightclub, a medical officer at Brand’s Hatch Racetrack, a co-pilot in the Isle of Man air-race, a hospital consultant for 35 years, a medical director for 8 years and an Aberdeenshire crofter / tree planter for 40 years, now mixing Scottish native species with Sequoia and other giant redwoods.
In general, science and medicine abhor ambiguity, but art and creativity revel in generating alternative interpretations, constantly raising expectations only to subvert them. The twist in the tale or in the tune; the double take of visual phenomena, the pattern-matching hardwired into our every sensory modality, all of which by their very nature are vulnerable to playful subversion. So I believe if it ain’t subversive, it probably isn’t art!
A constant preoccupation for me has been how can we in our current era relate authentically to nature, to integrate our milieu intérieur with the external world. And maybe the crux of the problem lies in our emotional and neurophysiological evolution in mesolithic times, which could account for the dysphoria, the restless sense of unease that often afflicts us in cities, where we may feel shrunk, peripheralised and negated by the endless stony vistas, the crowd of unfriendly strangers, the haughty imposing buildings, and by all the desolate manmade spaces created in this appalling anthropocene age both in peacetime and war. Becoming aware of our essentially mesolithic nature, can we perhaps more specifically address our central need for meaningful environments which support rather than erode our sense of wellbeing? Is this what art might be about?
One can learn quite a lot in a lifetime of eighty years of constant observation of the world, self and others, and through the unceasing acquisition of skills; but at every turn the frontiers of one’s ignorance are starkly evident in every direction
Ach weel… For further information please see my experimental e-novel !Leonardo Mind for Modern Times, available as a free download from Apple Books:
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/!leonardo-mind-for-modern/id541725141?mt=11
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/the-scottish-shed/id707709467?mt=11
Geraldine McClure
Originally from Northern Ireland, I came to Scotland to study Medical Physics at Aberdeen University. I then pursued a career in Clinical Science at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary. Latterly, I studied B&W film photography through Gray’s School of Art short course programme. I went on to study a HND in photography at NESCOL in Aberdeen and then an honours degree in Photography at City of Glasgow College. The medium of photography provides an outlet for creativity, whether through documenting the world around me or through the use of alternative processes and printing techniques. I use both digital and film photography in my work.
The work ‘Graffiti’ presents a stage in an ongoing project inspired by the history, landscape, and community of the Braes of Glenlivet and The Scalan site in particular. This unique place offers much from a creative perspective and there is the fascinating challenge of distilling selected elements into photographic pieces that are reflective of its story. I am interested in aspects of photographic practice that arise from being involved with a community and the associated opportunity for collaborative working practices. The selection of print media is a creative decision determined by the work; for example photographic paper or fabric. This final piece is digitally printed on fabric and was made for the official opening of the North and South Mills by His Majesty King Charles III in September 2023.
The subsequent gallery represents a selection of images made in Arbroath in the summer of 2021 when pandemic restrictions had eased. Over a few day trips to the harbour area I made photographs; enjoying my freedom, documenting different aspects of the harbour and the manual process of using film and my medium format and 35mm cameras.
Website: https://www.rgmphotography.co.uk/
John Paul Raine
I’ve been a professional artist since leaving Gray’s in 1985 (age 37). Before that I worked as an illustrator for the oil industry, educational publishing and (many years ago) for Yorkshire Television. I have been a mental health care worker, and a lecturer at Aberdeen College and at Gray’s School of Art (ad hoc). Recently I retired from Roevig Folkehoejskole in Denmark, where I was the senior art teacher for over a decade.
Over the years I have shown my paintings in the Roger Billcliffe Gallery, the Rendezvous, Gallery Heinzel, the Whitehouse Gallery, Eion Stewart Fine Art, the Torrance Gallery and Gallery Q. These days many of my available paintings can be found at the Finzean Farm Shop and at the McEwan Gallery.
www.rainesflowerpaintings.uk
Instagram: john_paul_raine
Charles M. Smith
I’m a silversmith, I make beakers, teapots, coffee pots, boxes, plates, kilt belt buckles, plaid brooches. I do some enamelling, mostly on copper, and I make clocks using a battery movement, enamelled copper, wood and rivets.
Helen Scaife
Helen Scaife is an experienced artist and art teacher focusing mainly on Painting and Drawing. She recently received a Micro-commission from the Friends of Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museums and is currently showing there her mixed media piece on global warming and rising sea levels called “Rising Pillars of Aberdeen”.
Over the years she has developed a deep interest or obsession with nature and movement, especially the movement of water. She uses charcoal, watercolour, acrylic and oil sometimes portraying people in the waves.
She has shown since graduating from Art College in Cardiff in Wales, London, Germany, Devon and most recently here in Scotland through NEOS and the Hyv Pop-Up Shop.
Helen runs classes locally after having 22 years experience teaching focusing on a range of media. If you are interested in joining her art classes here in Stonehaven please contact her directly.
Stephen Redpath
I live in Tarland and my work explores the relationship between landscape and emotion. I draw much of my inspiration from the wild multi-layered landscapes of northern Scotland, building on direct observation, memories and emotional responses. My watercolour paintings invite the viewer to reflect and explore their own experiences and emotional connection to these precious places.
Website: stephenmredpath.com
IG: smrpaintings
Sedem Demir
I am Sedem, a mixed media artist and illustrator based in Aberdeen. Though a blank page can be daunting, sketchbooks are a safe space to experiment and put marks on a page. No one but you has to see it, so why fear what marks you do.
Throughout the pandemic and even after, I considered sketch booking a helpful tool for maintaining mental health and wellbeing because it is one of the best ways to practise mindfulness which is proven to reduce anxiety.
Drawing on location is a big part of my practise as I find it as stepping out of my comfort zone whilst carrying out the action of something within my own comfort zone while being in nature and drawing from observation as it can offer more than drawing from photos in a studio room.
I share my process, materials I use and how I use them on my Patreon, sell prints and zines on my website.
You can follow my creative journey on my Instagram page.
ANNE MARQUISS
Recent pieces in silver, etched, filed and oxidised.
Fiona Michie
My passion is drawing, creating storytelling pictures in charcoal and pen and ink.
Inspiration comes from my love of Gothic Romanticism, ghost stories and the supernatural found in film and literature. I see my drawings as the visual equivalent to my own Victorian Gothic novel.
Carla Angus
Carla has a research-based practice driven by stories of object, place and people, recontextualising heritage through a contemporary visual art lens. Sitting at the intersection of deep mapping, object biography and materiality, her work is thoughtful and conversational, highlighting connections between things that may be otherwise hidden. These links and stories dictate the medium and materials she uses, and new pieces of work often necessitate learning new skills or collaboration with other creatives or relevant experts. Recent work has been inspired by an inherited sealkin waistcoat, a victorian mansion and a cathedral.
Initially a theatre designer, Carla was co-director of an arts retreat for 15 years with her husband Bryan Angus and also has an extensive background in arts development and creative project management.
carlaeveangus@gmail.com
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