I left Edinburgh during a very busy Saturday opening with Malcolm Appleby, heading north to Aberdeen to catch the overnight ferry to Lerwick. I arrived on the Sunday in torrential rain. As I watched it hammer against the windows, I did begin to wonder whether this was going to be the weather for the week ahead. Luckily I go to Shetland prepared for all weathers. The purpose of this visit was to spend time with several artists in their studios and homes across the islands. Studio visits are an essential part of what we do at The Scottish Gallery.
North to Yell
Ron Sandford
My first studio visit took me north to Cullivoe in Yell to see Ron Sandford and Meilo So. It is around two hours from Lerwick, including the ferry from Toft, and the journey itself gives you a real sense of Shetland’s distances and its changing landscape. We are celebrating Ron’s 90th year in 2027 with an exhibition which will look back across his career as well as his current practice, so this was an important opportunity to spend time with him and begin selecting work. Ron has devoted more than six decades to drawing, working daily in pen, ink and watercolour. His career later took him to Hong Kong before he and Meilo settled in Cullivoe in 2002. What connects all of this is drawing. Buildings and engineering, landscapes and people, travel and everyday life have all been recorded through Ron’s distinctive line and extraordinary powers of observation. Since moving to Yell, the landscape, architecture, maritime traditions and people of Shetland have become part of that continuing record. There is a big story to tell, and his 90th year is the right moment to bring the different strands of his remarkable career together. After locally caught mussels and homemade fruitcake, we somehow managed to pack a substantial selection of work into the car and by late Tuesday, I was back on the road.
South Mainland
Ruth Brownlee
On Wednesday I headed south to meet Ruth Brownlee and Gail Harvey. Ruth has an exhibition with us in 2028 and her relationship with Shetland is fundamental to her painting. She has lived and worked here for more than two decades, responding to its shifting light, weather and restless sea. She often begins outside, walking, looking, sketching and painting directly in the landscape, before developing larger works in the studio. Her paintings are not simply descriptions of particular views. They capture something of what it actually feels like to experience this landscape and its rapidly changing conditions.
View Ruth Brownlee’s work here
Gail Harvey
Gail Harvey has lived and worked in Shetland since 1988, although her relationship with the islands began much earlier, when she first came here as a Glasgow School of Art student in 1973. She works between small water-based paintings made outside and larger oil paintings developed in the studio, looking particularly at the energy, light, space and movement of the coast. Gail lives close to St Ninian’s Isle, which has one of the most spectacular coastlines in Shetland. We were lucky enough to have several seals come in to say hello too. It is easy to understand why artists continue to be drawn here.
West Mainland
Peter Davis
On Thursday I travelled west to Silwick to spend time with Peter Davis. Peter has worked in watercolour for more than forty years and has lived in Shetland since the early 1990s. Since retiring from teaching in 2013, he has painted full time from his studio in Silwick, where the meeting of sea, sky, weather, and light provides an inexhaustible subject. Peter took me on a walk around Silwick so that I could properly understand the landscape behind the work. The last time I visited it was foggy, freezing, windy and thoroughly dreich, so it was quite something to see it under completely different conditions. His watercolours are not literal descriptions of particular views. Peter is interested in that uncertain territory between abstraction and reality, allowing water, pigment and chance to play their part. It is a medium particularly suited to Shetland, where everything can change in minutes. Walking there with him made perfect sense of the work. Why would he need to go anywhere else? Peter is already well underway with a stunning new body of work for his major solo exhibition with us in December 2027.
Janette Kerr
I had another visit in the West Mainland which came about by accident. I had spotted Janette Kerr on the ferry north but was too shy to go over and say hello. Once I discovered that she lived not too far from Peter, I emailed her and was lucky to find her at home. Kerr’s practice is drawn to the edges of land and sea and particularly to unstable, rapidly changing weather. Walking, observing and working outside are central to her practice: the movement of the sea, wind, waves, rain, mist and fleeting light all find their way into her paintings. She has concentrated particularly on Shetland and the far north for the past fifteen years, dividing her time between Shetland and Somerset. Janette showed me around her studio and home and, rather wonderfully, pointed out the view which Kate Downie had painted, and which featured in Kate’s recent Grasslands exhibition at The Scottish Gallery. One landscape, seen through another artist’s eyes.
Why Studio Visits Matter
Studio visits are vital for two reasons: getting to know the artist and understanding what drives their practice. In Shetland, that relationship between artist and place is particularly powerful. Travelling from Yell in the north, through the South Mainland and across to the west, you begin to understand that there isn’t one Shetland landscape. Each artist notices something entirely different. They are united in loving the place in all weathers, especially the winter.
