watercolours 2018

RSW 137th Open Annual Winter Exhibition

5th Feb - 8th March 2018
The Lower Galleries, Scottish National Galleries Academy Building, The Mound, Edinburgh

Flux 6 watercolour 30" x 42"

This year's annual open exhibition of work by members of The Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour opened to the public on Monday the 5th February 2018. It was held in the lower galleries of the Royal Scottish Academy, The Mound, Edinburgh.

"Flux 6" (above), included in the exhibition, was described by The Scotsman's Art Critic Duncan MacMillan:

"Alison Dunlop has made an art form out of what seems little more than a single, arching brushstroke of transparent blue, but enlivened by all the subtle patterns that the pigment makes as the water that carries it flows and dries."

The full review can be found here.

watercolours - Isle of Harris and Wester Ross/Inner Sound

study: Lingerbay 1

"the Isle of Harris seems to draw me to it again and again and I've just discovered that it has now been over 30 years since my first visit to the island."

study: Lingerbay 3

study: hebridean wave 1

"the task is as simple or as complicated as it needs to be. My eyes seem to be drawn constantly to the horizon across the Inner Sound and The Minch, through my windows and back again to the canvas, regardless of what I’m currently working on. The endless dance of light out there and the energy and tension at play around the line where sea and sky meet, informs so much of what I do."

study: hebridean wave 3

"every day is a battle to find meaning in the line and the light."

study: hebridean wave 5

"This place is about horizons. The horizon. When I look out through any of my windows, I can see to the far distance. Whether it’s to the West across the Inner Sound to Skye and then over the Minch to Harris, or through the back windows to the East, across the expanse of peat bog and rough pasture to the rugged hills beyond....

It is always out there, in the distance, that baseline. It keeps me grounded and tells me what’s heading our way. I always sense it’s there, somewhere in the light, or dark. Steady and true. It is rarely obscured up here, by man - his presence, his structures. And it is always low. Because the sky here is vast, just as it seemed as a child, growing up in Canada."

study: Lingerbay 2

"each time, without fail, it takes several days to adjust to its spirit of intense, unbelievable contrasts and uncompromising ruggedness. My reaction to it is always a deeply visceral one - almost, at times, overwhelming. It usually throws me completely off-balance and gives a major jolt - an energising and exhilarating 'restore and thorough back-up' to my system."