Norma Maclean A Retrospective

July 1st - 16th 2017 Open 11am - 5pm daily

Born in Cheshire of Scottish parentage, Norma attended grammar school in Stockport and on returning to Scotland began her career in Edinburgh in Jenners Advertising Department where she developed her artistic talent for fashion drawing, at the same time attending Edinburgh College of Art, studying the draped figure. Following her three years training, Norma worked as a fashion artist, for Draffens and a Fashion Editor for DC Thomson in Dundee. In the early nineties she studied painting at Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen, gaining a BA honours degree in Fine Art and Design. Her paintings have been exhibited in the RSA and more recently in the RSW exhibition in The Meffan in Forfar. She has also exhibited in many galleries across Scotland and regularly with The Edinburgh Gallery and the Battersea Art Fair in London. Norma Maclean’s paintings are always authoritative, often masterly. Her Venice pictures, noted for their vibrancy of colour, echo JW M Turner with a confidence as sure as the architecture of that great city itself, as much in her watercolours as in her oils. The brooding Scottish east-coast seascapes, from around her Auchmithie home, capture the shifting drama of the subject with an intensity of understanding and restrained but subtle palettes, as if she was born to it. In her portrayals of the landscapes of rural Angus, her eyes find colour and significance and sense of season many would overlook, and her portraiture shows her strength of line and understanding of light, modulated by a natural tenderness towards the subject.