gwen black

Gwen has been exhibiting her work extensively over the years, venues include The Lemon Tree, Peacock Visual Arts, The Bridge, Conoco UK Ltd. Grampian Hospital Arts Trust, Milton Gallery, Carbyart, The Art Institute of Seattle, USA, Aberdeen Art Gallery and the RSA Edinburgh.

With an Honours degree in Fine Art from Grays School of art in Aberdeen, specialising in Printmaking, she has set up her studio in the West Highlands of Scotland, where she works as a full time artist while teaching courses in printmaking and other art techniques.

‘My work at the moment is about man’s constant need to control his environment in an endless battle with nature and its voracious re-growth. His eternal needs to create himself habitation and produce sustenance, to overlay his own geometry on the rural landscape through farming and architecture. In these endeavours he has employed a spectacular series of mazes, in fencings and walls, (the maze and its precursor, the spiral, being the primeval structure for the containment of Chaos). While looking at this enclosing of land through fencing and dyking, a patchwork of vital colours and shapes appears inspiring the patterning, which has been translated into cultural and ethnic designs throughout history.

Taking all of these elements as inspiration and employing a process of simplification in patterning, colour and texture I aspire to compose pieces of work which are strong and bold in colour and shape, with a balanced harmony to engage the viewer and bring a moment of sensory stimulation, quiet calm and a colourful interlude to the grey bustle of the ‘every day’.