Unsentimental landscapes focus on feeling, not topography

There is a famous romantic myth surrounding the artist JMW Turner who claimed, in 1842, to have lashed himself to a ship’s mast in a storm to more fully experience and capture the very essence of nature at its most extreme. The contemporary painter Helen Glassford cites Turner (the show’s title is one such clue) among her artistic progenitors.

Some of these are referenced explicitly: one oil is titled By the Sea (Minus the Monk, after Friedrich), which recalls the great German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich and his work, Monk by the Sea, completed in 1810.

Although Glassford’s painting is much smaller than the Friedrich its colours, tonal qualities, energy and subject matter all point to her distant predecessor, with one exception: like all her paintings By the Sea is utterly devoid of human presence. Conceived in isolation, like many here, in the more remote parts of Scotland, Glassford’s work also points to another literary and artistic concept, that of the sublime, in which the seemingly ordinary is elevated to a position of special significance.

However, these are not images of or about landscape or seascape where specific location and topography is a key element; they are, rather, about the feeling the landscape generates in the artist, which is then reflected back to the viewer.

Glassford describes her work as “a balancing act of memory and emotion” but says that “to romanticise the landscape, would be an injustice”. These are powerful works, full of heartfelt passion, craft, skill and integrity.