artists Dumfries and Galloway, Serena Rowe, art Scotland, watercolours, oil paintings
 
 
 
I had always wanted to paint people but when I couldn’t find anyone who would sit for me I started to find things that would : pieces I found around me in my studio, in my grandmothers’ house, in the woods, or brought in by the tide on the shore. My foraging resulted in a cuckoo’s nest of characters. These things - random belongings of humans and nature - have memories ,meanings and characters - just as people do. They had their stories to tell as well. And so I began to paint their portraits.
 
An object’s interest to me might not be immediately apparent.
 

For example, I was instantly attracted to the qualities of a red jug I found in a market and took it back to my studio to paint and it was only later that I realised its’ colour reminded me of a great aunt’s kitchen and the colour of rail tracks in a painting I admired by Soutine. Other pieces are more obvious to me in their resonance, such as the bone handled knives which belonged to my Scottish grandmother.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

It can be an objects’ shape and form that catch my eye and I impose human characteristics onto them I suppose ; a sensual curve of a cup handle, a mischievous edge of a knife, a laughing jug. I see them as individuals, and just as humans behave differently on their own and in groups, so too do these objects when brought together in one painting. The canvas becomes the plane for them to exist in and converse with one another. And once in paint, their existence has a permanence.

 

I mostly work from life and occasionally from drawings and memory. I hope you enjoy looking at my work and if you would like to discuss any of the paintings in greater detail I would be happy to hear from you.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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