Arran artist turns lockdown time into emerging project
An emerging Arran artist is to have her work featured in a prestigious exhibition to be hosted online this year.
Jane Greenstreet, who has lived on the island for more than three years, felt ready for a new challenge and enrolled on the Ullapool-based Bridge House Art School’s portfolio course 2020/21 which culminates with an online exhibition opening tomorrow (Saturday).
Jane told the Banner: ‘I was a novice artist and only started drawing during the first lockdown when I was shielding with my 90-year-old mother in the south of England to support her emotionally and practically. As she dozed in her chair, ate her porridge and took her blood pressure, I tried to record what her daily life was really like in drawing and painting.
‘In October last year, I headed up to Ullapool to start the course. It was strange but exciting being a student again for the first time in 40 years. During the first term, the seven of us on the course worked in the studios together, be it with all the strict social distancing and Covid-safe measures in place. During this time the excellent tutors introduced us to a new medium every week including oils, print and sculpture.
‘I came home to Pirnmill for Christmas fully expecting to return to Ullapool in January but then the second lockdown was imposed. The course was transferred online and I set up my studio in our spare bedroom, occasionally borrowing a bit of my husband, Robert Stevens’ [Gobhlach Art], studio space for printmaking. Jane added: ‘The work I will be exhibiting explores how our bodies can communicate how we feel just by the way we stand, sit or lie, for example, when I feel low my body slumps. When I am happy, I walk with a spring in my step. Partly due to my own feelings during the course, I have particularly focused on conveying the vulnerability and strength we all have inside us.’
This virtual exhibition entitled Emerge at the An Talla Solais Gallery in Ullapool will run for four weeks. Another course student, Rachael Dixey, explained: ‘The exhibition is called Emerge, to reflect the students’ emergence as artists and society’s emergence from a terrible time, with hope for the future.
The link is: www.antallasolais.org/bha-portfolio-2021