The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Ron Lawson: The Grey Light
Strathearn Gallery, Crieff, until November 11
The career of Perthshire artist Ron Lawson goes from strength to strength. His distinctive landscapes capturing the stark majesty of Scotland’s highlands and islands have become a hot ticket among art lovers with exhibitions of his work regularly selling out.
The latest venue to showcase Ron’s talents is Crieff’s Strathearn Gallery, which is staging the biggest collection of his gouache watercolours to date at its West High Street premises to mark 40 years since his work was first exhibited.
Titled “The Grey Light”, it features 60 new paintings that represent the culmination of months of research, travel and painstaking studio work. Ron’s latest offerings are in his trademark style, with most depicting the beautifully isolated cottages beneath leadened skies that are unique to the Western Isles, one of Scotland’s most remote landscapes.
“The highlands and islands have always been favourite locations of mine from early childhood holidays to the present day,” he explains. “I never tire of returning to the Hebrides. The openness of the landscape and the quite often remoteness of small communities and individual houses appeals to me.”
Underlining Ron’s meticulous devotion to the creative process, locations he’s recently journeyed to on Eriskay, Barra, Tiree, North and South Uist, Harris and Benbecula all feature among the Outer Hebrides landscapes included in the Crieff exhibition.
“What I try to capture in my work is a feeling,” he adds. “I want the viewer to imagine they’re standing right there in that view. Perhaps walking up a beach, over rocks or maybe sitting enjoying the peace and quiet. Whilst my work is obviously an interpretation, it’s pleasing that so many people are taken right to the location and feel the peaceful calmness.”
Within two years of starting full-time work in DC Thomson’s art studios in Dundee aged just 16, Ron started showing his work in galleries in Angus in 1978. Throughout his 34-year career with the publishers he continued to exhibit and eventually took the decision in 2010 to concentrate solely on his Hebridean artworks.
With demand for his paintings continually growing, it’s clearly a move that’s paid off. Now, undeterred by the harshness of life on the Atlantic archipelago, Ron splans to spend even more time taking in its stunning vistas in the near future.
“It’s been said to me by more than one islander that many people who come to settle on the islands last only one winter. It’s my intention in the not too distant future to spend all four seasons on the Uists. I’d like to get a better feel for the place. Doubtless I’ll prove the islanders correct, though.”