This exhibition offers a cosmological view of these things and places the landscape and that which enriches and feeds it into close connection. There is a dialogue between the two and a synchronicity to the forms, colours and rhythms of the land. It brings together the work of two explorers of the inner and outer space of the natural world.
/ / /
Heraclitus the pre-Socratic philosopher considered the world to be in constant flux and posited that primal chaos is the true foundation of all reality.
The current drawings and paintings by Paul Martin appear to emerge from the primal chaos of the earth. The paper he works on seems to absorb… the essence of organic matter. His visual images seem to echo Nan Shepherd’s* description of the soil and ever changing character of vegetation, although she represents the Cairngorms, another area of Northern Scotland. The more one learns of the intricate interplay of soil, altitude, weather and the living tissue of plant and insect…. the more the mystery deepens.
Martin’s textured earth-coloured gestures do not appear to identify any particular plant form but represent instead layers above and below the surface of the land as if to expose centuries of growth and decay…Two Puils 2016 and Green Henge 2015 are made up of short, blue, black or umber and pale cursive strokes which dance across the surface of the work like musical notation. Alternatively do these marks refer to the growth of sporophytes on moss or litchen on rocks? Over millennia a multitude of marks incised on surfaces whether rocks, sand,skin or paper have recorded man’s engagement with and response to his environment. Primal gestures, either impulsive or premeditated, were transposed from basic arrangements into primitive pictograms in which the origin of written language lies. A form of proto-writing appears to be emerging from the mire in these images through implied symbols that speak of the transitory flux of the earth. - Alistair R. Noble
*Nan Shepherd 'The Living Mountain' (2011)
/ / /
Derek Christies photographs are microscopic images of those lifefull, energetic, forms of plants and animals hidden to the naked eye.
His recent studies have taken him to Scottish corries, locks and streams in which are found algae, protozans and small crustaceans in a wonderful variety of shapes and lifestyles, the source of much of the air we breath. Although invisible to us they, in fact, allow us to exist on our planet and are rarely understood or acknowledged by us.
/ / /
Exhibition open Monday - Saturday, 9am - 4:30pm
Private View: Friday 13 January 2017, 5pm - 8pm