Longtime artist pals set to show their contrasting works at last

JAN PATIENCE

tenderness to her scenes.

A lot of these watercolours, with titles such as Walk Back and Through the Fields, were created earlier this year and quietly exude a confident and knowing hand at work.

Her love of paintings created against the febrile backdrop of the Second World War is clear.

Strongly influenced by mid-20th century painters and illustrators with a love of the land, she admits owing a debt to the likes of Eric Ravilious and Evelyn Dunbar, who worked as a war artist during the Second World War, focusing on the work of the Women’s Land Army.

Tender, delicate, intimate and beautiful, all Hand’s paintings in this body of work contain figures, apart from one called Kettle’s On. There’s a patchwork quality to some paintings, particularly the likes of Life Stories, which hark back to simpler times and to homespun activities of yore; creating samplers or scrap books.

According to McFadyen, this show at the Glasgow Gallery featuring work by these two old friends was “always going to happen.” Both worked solidly during lockdown and beyond, working towards a planned opening earlier this month. The proposed date was pushed back because of Level Four restrictions in Glasgow, and now officially opens on January 5.

Before that, visitors will be able to have a look before this formal opening today, Tuesday and Wednesday.

It’s rare to find artists whose work sits so companionably. McFadyen and Hand buck this trend while cementing a friendship 40 years in the making. And counting.

Lex McFadyen & Madeleine Hand: 40 Years in the Making, Glasgow Gallery, 182 Bath Street, Glasgow, G2 4HG, 0141 333 1991, www. glasgowgallery.co.uk. Special Preview Days: today (Dec 19), Tuesday December 22 & Wednesday December 23. Runs from January 5 to February 27, 2021, 11 am-5pm

I MIGHT be wrong here (and feel free to correct me), but Katherine Taylor and Hector Start might be the only two graduating art students in Scotland to have held a physical degree show in 2020. Earlier this year, students across the land held online iterations of their degree shows following lockdown in March.

Taylor and Start above, who are a couple, have been students of Lews Castle College UHI studying for a BA (Hons) in Fine Art based while based at Taigh Chearsabhagh in North Uist. The pair, originally from Moray, were due to hold their respective degree shows in May at the Lochmaddy-based arts centre, but both were postponed in the hope they could exhibit at some point.

Now, not only is their degree show now available to view digitally alongside other graduating fine art students from the University of the Highlands and Islands UHI), but the physical version of their degree shows opened two weeks ago at Taigh Chearsabhagh.

The two artists have taken diverse paths in terms of their studio practice and theoretical concerns in the last five years but they have both been hugely influenced by their experience of living in Uist and making connections with the environment around them.

Start has created series of five oil paintings which respond directly to the sublime landscape of North Uist. Although not the be-all and end all of a degree show, it’s a bonus that all his paintings have sold since the exhibition opened on December 5. In her multi-media work,

Taylor explores imagination and oceanic space through a multidisciplinary approach, including drawing and sculpture.

people who respond and say things like ‘Your music is helping me, these little clips are helping me to get through’.

“I’m not Mother Teresa, I’m not trying to do anything like that.

“I’m just communicating in a really weird time, a Covid time, where there is this restriction on everything and the world is being turned upside down.”

Whilst not fully convinced by its spirituality, Lennox is fascinated with the ritual and belief behind Christmas.

As a child, she eagerly anticipated her school Christmas service, where the kids would trail in “great crocodile lines” to church to sing carols and gasp at the towering tree.

“I’m a sponge for music,” she says of those memories.

“I hear things and it lasts with me. “I love melody and I didn’t fully understand baby Jesus and any of that.

“You know there’s a baby Jesus that’s in a crib with shepherds and kings and angels and then there’s the crucified Jesus, with blood and thorns and the torture and the cruelty of it.