I will have a few artist proofs available to buy soon and they can be reserved by contacting me directly. Click here to reserve yours now!
However, the first and original Super Moon is still available to buy here!
Super Moon
And, if you’re quick, you still have time to grab one before Christmas!
Better still, you can get 25% off the usual price using discount code BLACKFRIDAY
It’s that time of year when everyone’s looking for a good deal. So I’ve decided to offer a HUGE 25% Black Friday DISCOUNT on all my giclée prints and etchings for a very limited time only. (Ends Sun 27th Nov at 11.55pm)
Dean Village (Sunset) – 65x50cm (usual price £150 – now £112.50)
So if you’re looking for an extra special and very personal Christmas present for yourself or a loved one then look no further!
The Old Town, Edinburgh – 65x50cm (usual price £150 – now £112.50)
Select anything from my Big Cartel shop using discount code BLACKFRIDAY and you’ll not only get this great saving but you’ll also receive it carefully wrapped and packaged well before Christmas.
Towards Arthur’s Seat, Edinburgh – 45x33cm (usual price £95 – now £71.25)
And that includes one of my very rare and highly saught after Blue Moon etchings! There’s just a couple of these available right now, so you’ll have to be quick off the mark to get one at this price – and with almost £150 off the usual price!
[PLEASE NOTE: my Blue Moon numbered edition has now SOLD OUT! See most recent post for details on how to reserve a a very rare Artist Proof Blue Moon!]
Blue Moon A/P – etching 57x47cm image size (usual price £595 – now £446.25)
I am very excited to be showing several of my oil paintings and handmade prints with Edinburgh’s newest purveyor of fine art, Graystone Gallery. Owner Lesley has found a truly inspired space for her inaugural show in what has to be the most exquisite and stylish boutique hotel I’ve ever seen!
And you are invited to the Private View at 24 Royal Terrace this coming Thursday (details below).
On any given day, the walls of 24 Royal Terrace, aka The Art Hotel, are full of colour and when I dropped off my own works for this winter show last Friday I was astonished (in a very good way!) to see such a huge variety of great art in one incredible setting. The pictures above give only a tiny taste of what it’s really like in there!
Glitter Moon – Blue Etching and screen print 58 x 48cm (image size)
The hotel owner, who has personally collected art from around the world and curated each and every room herself, not only has excellent taste but has created a highly unique setting in which you can indulge yourself over a cocktail or a fine whisky while taking in some fabulous contemporary art.
The Bass Rock (Nocturne) Oil on wood panel 74 x 74cm framed
Alongside some pretty huge and important works by the likes of John Bellany and Alan Davie, there’s a highly ecclectic mix of landscapes, figurative and abstract pieces that should pique the interest of any art enthusiast. I could easily have spent a day in there myself!
Dubh Artach Oil on wood panel 74 x 74cm framed
For this first Graystone Gallery pop-up show a number of the walls have been rehung with works by around 20 contemporary artists from Scotland and beyond, including 9 by yours truly.
Where There Is Light Oil on wood panel 78cm x 78cm framed
So if you love art and happen to be in Edinburgh this coming Thursday evening then you need to get along to the private view (details below)!
Rattray Head (Cirrus Clouds) Oil on canvas 79 x79cm framed
If you can’t make that then the show will run until 2 Jan 2023. And, as you can see below, Lesley has also organised a number of events to run alongside this show, including an Artist’s Night, at which I and a couple of others will discuss our techniques and inspirations.
It all promises to be a very special feast for the eyes and one not to be missed this festive period!
“The theme of the sea also comes up again and again in the work of Fife Dunfermline Printmakers Workshop in the Lesser Hall in James Street. Also part of the invited programme, this artist-run cooperative brings together a range of artists working in different styles and media. Particular highlights include Clive Ramage’s striking etching of the moon and Catherine King’s large monotype landscape, capturing weather, clouds and water in saturated shades of blue and grey.”
And I am also delighted to report that 3 of my Blue Moon prints sold on the very first day! That means there’s only 2 left to buy from the very limited edition of just 20 numbered prints!
One of 3 Blue Moons sold at Pittenweem on opening day. I wish this framed one had been left there for the whole show! I’ll have another framed for my NEOS event in September though, where I’ll also have some artist’s proofs for sale. Some lovely work also on show here by my Dunfermline printmaking colleagues Catherine King (left), Olga Krasanova (bottom right) and Peter Kirley (top right).
This moon etching really does seem to glow as brightly as the real thing and it makes a beautiful and bold statement on any wall. It comes from an extremely limited numbered edition of 20 and they have consistently sold at the few shows I’ve entered them.
Here’s a video of me pulling a print from the copper plate just last week …
There are now only 2 numbered prints left, plus a few artists proofs (which I’ll be holding on to for my North East Open Studios (NEOS) event 10-19 Sept 2022 – more details to come!).
Me with my moon print at the preview on Friday night
So if you want your very own Blue Moon to gaze at whenever you like then get in touch with me now or follow the link to my shop and bag yours before they’re all gone!
My Dunnottar Castle print at Pittenweem alongside work bt Peter Kirley (left) and Bethany Snaddon (right)
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Original, hand-made etching printed on 310gsm Hanhmuhle etching paper.
Limited to an extremely small edition of only 20 prints.
Image size: 57.5 x 47 cm (22.5 x 18.5 inches)
Paper Size 71 x 53.5 cm / (28 x 22 inches)
Shipping: The print is sold unframed, but lovingly wrapped and rolled in tissue and packaged in a tough cardboard tube for protection. UK p&p is £20 and shipping time is around 2 weeks. International delivery is £25 but allow up to 3 weeks.
Tomorrow marks the start of the Pittenweem Arts Festival (6-13th August) and I’m very happy to be taking part alongside fellow members of Fife Dunfermline Printmakers Workshop. I’m looking forward to seeing all the work we have on show at the preview this evening.
All are welcome to come along tonight for an early viewing between 6.30-9pm at Lesser Church Hall, James St, Pittenweem.
Dunnottar Castle
Above are 2 of the large framed prints I have in the show, St Monans and Dunnottar Castle. Both etchings were produced in July especially for this event.
I’ll also be showing my Blue Moon etching (below). There are only a few left from this very limited edition of 20 numbered prints, so if you want to own one you best hurry to bag yours!
Blue Moon
I have a few other mounted prints available from the venue including the following, all of which are fairly local to the area:
A Hot Summer’s Day, ElieThe Old Wooden Pier, CulrossEdinburgh CastleThe Old Iron Pier, Aberdour
If you can get to Pittenweem during the festival you will find art filling the streets and almost every home above the beautiful harbour and beyond. It’s a fantastic event and well worth the trip for a great day out!
I currently have several of my etchings in a fantastic new printmaking show at Frames Gallery in Perth.
I was very happy to see some red dots below some of my pieces at the private view, including the ones below, and also to be showing alongside some of my favourite Scottish printmakers.
The North Face, Ben Nevis 🔴
It really is an excellent and varied exhibition, showcasing some of the best in contemporary printmaking techinques and styles and I’m delighted to be taking part. Click here to see the works on show and do drop by if you are in Perth.
Spanish Hornet (ii) 🔴
As these are editioned prints there are several of each still available, so get in touch with Frames Gallery if you are interested in anything you see here (or there!).
Here are a few more of the framed etchings I have on show at the gallery, and click here if you’d like to see the whole show online.
Edinburgh CastleThe Old Wooden Pier, CulrossBlue MoonDean Village, EdinburghThe Old Iron Pier, Aberdour
The Urban, Land and Sea show at Heriot Gallery in Dundas Street, Edinburgh, closes this Saturday. I have several pieces in it inlucing these two large and colourful scenes of Dean Village, Edinburgh and North Berwick.
If you are in town the whole show is well worth a visit!
Dean Village (Sunset)
Click here for details and to see what’s in the show.
Just a quick note to wish you a very Happy New Year and also to say a huge !!THANK YOU!! to everyone who bought my paintings and, therefore, supported me greatly in my work throughout 2021.
Lots of very good things happened this past year, including my move to Aberdeen and settling into a great new studio here. I’ve also recently begun working with some local galleries (including Ballater and Braemar) and have lots of energy and inspiration for new pictures to paint and send to them, as well as to my regular galleries in the coming months.
Keep an eye out here for news of my latest works in progress and exhibitions, including Land & Sea which opens later this month at Heriot Gallery in Dundas Street, Edinburgh.
In the meantime, I wish you a safe, prosperous and very happy 2022!
I wrote most of the following on New Year’s day 2020, when life seemed a lot more easy and carefree. For some reason though I never got round to posting it on my website. So here’s what I wrote with minor amendments and an updated New Year’s to do list for 2021 …
Happy New Year from me! (1st Jan 2021 with Whitewisp hill in the Ochils behind.)
Scales of Superstition
Over 30 years ago, when I was serving my time as a butcher’s apprentice and life was much simpler, we had a New Year tradition that I’ve since adopted and adapted for myself over the years.
In the last hour of the last working day each year, we’d scrub down our wooden blocks and every other surface in the place. Then we’d clean the mincer, the ham slicer, the dozens of emptied metal meat dishes, the fridges and the cabinets. Finally, our own very personal and prized knives would be cleaned, sharpened and shined until they and absolutely everything else in sight glistened and sparkled.
Everything, that is, except the scales we used to weigh and price the meat we boned, chopped, sliced and sold. Now butcher’s superstition says it’s bad luck to wipe away all traces of the passing year’s prosperity before proceeding into the next. So those scales would remain not only unwashed but positively reeking of last year’s trade. They’d be left bloody and rank throughout the holiday … and the ranker the better! And, if there wasn’t the required degree of meaty residue left after the last sale of the year, then a little mince or steak would be added to the scales for extra good luck. Just in case! It seemed to work and we did get busier each of my 3 years working there.
Castle Campbell (or ‘Castle Gloom’ looking positively radiant!) near Dollar
A Load of Old Claptrap?
But you and me both know that’s all superstitious claptrap and I personally like to think I’m not at all swayed by such nonsense. Sometimes I’ll even walk under a ladder just to prove the point to myself … and nothing bad’s ever happened as a result (well, not to my knowledge anyway!).
But every year I do have my very own New Year ritual (rather than resolution). It’s a tick list of ‘things to do’ before midnight on January 1st. Like last year’s meat left on the scales to usher in a prosperous new year, I tell myself these are the things I need to do to start the year as I mean to go on. I do it all with more than a little hope that whoever/whatever might be up there pulling the strings of good fortune may be paying attention; and that maybe I will be rewarded with success in each of my listed endeavours for 12 coming months as a result of observing this ritual.
So here’s my list for 2021 (and all ticked off before the 2nd, I’m happy to say!)
Wake up without a hangover.
Paint or draw something you’re happy with (I added a moon to a lighthouse picture).
Write something – I repurposed this, which definitely counts!
Walk up a hill (I had a bitterly cold but beautiful afternoon in the Ochils yesterday. See pics).
Say hello to a stranger – done several times on the way up that hill.
Be polite, patient and generous to EVERYONE. This is always included, but still requires further practice and tweeks!
So having acheived all of the above and a couple of other things, I went to bed feeling confident that I should remain busy and happy all year long.
As good inside as it is on the cover!
A Treasured Find
As far as continued prosperity goes, I got off to a pretty good start in the early hours of 2020 as I walked home from the pub. I found a £20 note on the pavement. It was folded and clasped in a blue clothes peg. There was nobody around except me so I pocketed it, as I’m sure you would have too. I’ve no idea what the peg represented, but I thanked the fates for dropping it in my path and went on my way. And it’s been in my pocket ever since. And, yes, despite Covid I had a very good year in many ways!
My lucky lucre!
This year I found 10p in the gutter on my way home after the bells. And, despite the comparative reduction in monetary value compared to last year’s treasured find, I’ll also be taking that as a sign that being slightly superstitious can sometimes be a good thing! 10p is better than nothing after all and I’ll be keeping it in my pocket all year long too. Call me superstitious but …
Anyway, if you got this far then I wish you the happiest New Year and a prosperous 2021. And if you didn’t then good luck to you all the same (not that you’ll know)! May all your dreams come true, may your lum aye reek and your scales aye be clarty!
A recently finished commission: East Neuk (Waxing Moon and Stars)
Until recently, I’d never heard of “The Beggar’s Mantle Fringed With Gold”. It was King James VI of Scotland who coined that description of Fife’s coast; the ragged shoreline being the frayed cloak from which the begging hand of Fife is held out in hope that the sea will provide sustenance. The gold lining perfectly captures the beautiful fishing villages that fringe the East Neuk, especially when the phosphorescent orange street lamps are aglow and the houses are lit up and cosy on a cold winter’s night.
I came to hear of it one Saturday morning a few weeks ago when my phone pinged to inform me that another painting had sold from my Big Cartel shop. As always, I got in touch with the buyer right away and, after discussing postage and various other details, asked where he’d come across my work.
Back to the beginning
The reply was so very unexpected and it not only made my day but also gave me the biggest confidence boost an artist could wish for.
The answer had its roots way back when I first started exhibiting in 2008. In fact, it was at the first exhibition I ever entered (the annual open at Kirkcaldy Museum and Art Gallery) that Jim had spotted my work. It was an oil painting of a row of typically-colourful cottages all huddled together along the shore, looking almost fearful of the next incoming tide. I’d given it the title Awaiting The Turn of The Tide with that thought in mind.
East Neuk (Starry Night)
A few days after the opening I returned to see the whole show and was thrilled to find my first ever red dot. The painting really seemed to glow and stand out quite nicely in that large space. I walked out with my feet in the air and feeling this idea of being an artist I’d had for a while might just work!
But you never really think about all the other people who might stop and have a look at your efforts in a gallery. So it came as a big surprise to hear that it was way back then that my new buyer informed me he had first seen my work. He had gone in on a mission to find inspiration for a song he was trying to write for a performance he’d soon be giving at that year’s Stanza Poetry Festival in St Andrews. The song had to capture that ‘beggar’s mantle fringed with gold’ feeling. He told me that it was my painting of glowing cottages tumbling down into the sea that had helped him to visualise an idea of what he wanted to capture in words. He went off and wrote the lyrics below for Dances With Angels, performed it at Stanza and that, as they say, was that.
East Neuk (Crescent Moon)
But now, 12 years later and living in Kent, he told me he’d always remembered that painting (someone else had bought it) and was now in a position to buy one of my East Neuk pictures for himself. In fact, he’d had a hard job choosing between the two I had for sale on my website and a couple of days later he ended up buying the other one as well. (The two paintings directly above.)
That he’d remembered my work all that time was incredibly uplifting for me. But that it had also helped him to write his lovely song was just wonderful to discover all these years later.
And so One thing leads to another
Jim has since gifted me a cd of his work, much of which has been covered by internationally renowned folk singer June Tabor. It’s a wonderful, highly evocative album and I’d recommend it to anyone who loves great music and the romance of the sea – and the East Neuk of Fife in particular. It’s called Diamonds In The Night by Andy Shanks and Jim Russell and is available to download at Amazon or from Greentrax Records. Dances With Angels isn’t on this album, but here’s a link to a Youtube video of Andy and Jim performing it live in Orkney back in 2000.
I think it’s great when work made in one art form inspires and informs that made in another. And to have had a wee part in that myself is a lovely thing!
I’ll be listening to Diamonds in The Night a lot this winter while I work, and I’m sure it will in turn inspire many more pictures that are still to be conjured up and painted into existence.
Dances With Angels, words by Jim Russell
The whole town is tumbling down to the sea,
Footsteps we left in the sand
Are gone when the moon pulls up the tide
Changing the paths we had planned.
Where is my comfort? There’s no angels here,
Unless they’re all hiding their wings,
Or dancing in small towns with strangers like me,
Hoping tomorrow brings.
Dances with angels
Dances with angels
They say angels dance by the steeple clock moon
With lighthouses flashing like stars,
Casting shadows and shapes and turning in time
To the staggering songs from the bars.
Now we travel with care and the tracks of our lives
Are a cage, but if you break free,
Go tumbling and turning then soaring like gulls,
Crow stepping down to the sea!
But where is my comfort? There’s no angels here,
Unless their all hiding their wings,
Or dancing in small towns with strangers like me,
Hoping tomorrow brings.
Dances with Angels
Dances with Angels
The streets are all dancing
The children are dancing
The songs from the bars spin around with the stars.
