Two artists bring fresh elements to the well-worn landscape genre

In Scotland, the artist’s love affair with landscape is well documented, in a tradition extending back at least two centuries. Interpretations and depictions of landscapes vary widely — from the mystical renditions of William Johnstone’s Border country to the exuberance of the Colourists’ scenes of the west coast. It seems that no stone has been left unturned in the artist’s quest to find novelty and meaning in nature.

Each artist is, of course, unique and each has their own particular take on place and context. Beth Robertson Fiddes has done well to find her own particular niche by exploring the intertidal zone along the coast of Scotland and further afield.

Her journeys have taken her to the Hebrides, St Kilda and Iceland. In each of these places she has rendered the exquisite beauty of the interplay between geology, the action of the sea and the particular way in which light penetrates water. Here is an exciting world of colour, texture, form and shape, all of which is rendered convincingly in Robertson Fiddes’s assured, bold but sensitive brushwork.

The scale of these works is important — they are generally larger works, allowing the artist to explore detail and to convey the complexity of her subject matter.

Colin Brown’s mixed-media assemblages and collages also convey a sense of the journey, for each is a unique portrait of the artist’s view of a place — Italy, the Czech Republic and most other European countries are depicted. Like Robertson Fiddes, Brown is also working a long tradition — one thinks of Kurt Schwitters, who was accomplished in the use of collage. These works, derived from all manner of ephemera — such as postcards, photographs and labels, as well as the artist’s own painted elements, might be described as travelogues. Brown combines his various elements into a seamless narrative, part homage, part love poem, where countless impressions, memories and experiences are combined. Although his approach is somewhat formulaic, the joy of these works lies in unpicking the detail, so that we become participants in the artist’s journey, where we are given the space to construct a narrative of our own choosing.