The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Advice on helping our local wildlife
Artist Philip Braham tells Andrew Welsh how a move to the country has allowed him to immerse himself in magnificent rural vistas
F or the past four decades Philip Braham has been examining the human condition through his depictions of the Scottish countryside. In recent years the Glasgow-born artist has achieved acclaim for a series of brooding landscapes that have reflected on our common mortality, with his latest body of work extending the theme to reflect emotions stirred while locked down in Perthshire from late winter through to summer last year.
A long-time admirer of the county’s often stunning rural vistas, Philip and his family moved from Edinburgh to Crieff three years ago, partly to escape city life, but also, crucially, to enable him to immerse himself in a setting that has become central to his calling.
Strathearn figures prominently in his latest exhibition Closer To Home, which has been showing online this month via the capital’s Scottish Gallery, and he tells me the Brahams are “absolutely loving” life in the photogenic locale.
“We’ve got two quite young children, an 11-year-old and a seven-year-old, and Edinburgh was just so frantic,” says Philip, who is art and philosophy programme director at Dundee University’s Duncan of Jordanstone College.
“My wife is a primary teacher and our wee one would get dropped off to nursery and the older one to school, and she’d be desperately rushing to try and get in before her pupils arrived. I was doing a commute to Dundee and lost my studio when the whole complex got sold over to a housing development company.
“A new studio in Edinburgh would’ve been very expensive, and that’s where the notion of changing everything and having a quieter, more peaceful existence came into play. Fortunately we sold our place quickly and the whole thing went through really fast, so we were very lucky that way.”
Given its vast array of picturesque sites, it’s no real surprise that Philip describes his Perthshire patch as “absolutely ideal”.
“It has certainly made this time in lockdown easier when we’re able to get out into the hills or just walk around in the farmlands round about us,” he adds. “I’m originally from Bearsden and it’s not unlike Crieff. Where we lived was on the edge of the moors as well, so in a way it was quite an easy decision to come here, for me anyway.”
As well as the prospect of having a potential wealth of source material on his doorstep, being able to operate a home studio has also proved a major plus. “When we moved, one of the prerequisites was there would need to be a space that would be a studio, so we converted a double garage,” Philip declares.
“It’s become a creative hub for all the family. My wife’s piano is in there and the kids have got clay and cardboard and all sorts of stuff there too. It’s just a great place where we all make things.”
Closer To Home is Philip’s first major exhibition since leaving Edinburgh, his base since the early 1980s. While the collection’s moody monochrome stills take in moments across most months, his paintings disproportionately focus on winter.
The majority of its 17 oils were completed during lockdown, and Philip says certain works can be interpreted as direct responses to the unfolding crisis.
“I often have three canvasses on the go simultaneously – one nearly finished, one halfway through and one just beginning – so at the start of lockdown it didn’t change much in terms of the kind of work that I was producing,” he explains.
“My way of working is to go out with my camera and use it a bit like a notebook or a sketchbook and take in interesting parts of the landscape, but often maybe I’ll change the sky or possibly parts in the foreground.
“I’m trying to capture a certain kind of atmosphere. So although these are very recognisable landscapes, they’re as much internal as external. When I’m painting a forest, for instance, I’m thinking of all the forests that I’ve ever known, and these go back to forests around Edinburgh such as where the Battle of Pinkie took place.
“It’s to give the viewer an insight into my internal way of working. So although the external landscape triggers things, what it’s