You are invited to the Preview on Friday 8 March 6-8pm at Annan Gallery, 164 Woodlands Rd, Glasgow

Beth's painting style is large scale, built up from complex layers of mixed media and just bursting with deep colour, to reflect her fascination with landform - the rocks, coastline and sea action that shape Scotland. Her style caught the attention of the judging panel for the Jolomo Award -largest privately funded art prize in UK -  when she was placed Second in 2011.

St Kilda, made up of a main island and jagged vertical outlier stacs in the Atlantic, 40 miles west of Harris is an ideal subject for Beth's dramatic approach.

click & browse

cliffs, skuas,caves

Why St Kilda?
"I am always looking for places on the edge, very remote places inhabited in the past and now abandoned"

Beth's ambitious trip had the usual false starts, a bumpy crossing, four days of rough camping on the main island, Hirta, partnered  with audacious St Kilda fieldmice and sadistic skuas for company and boat trips to the outlier sea stacs, the tallest in Britain.  Then followed six months of work in her studio.

The St Kilda story is of an isolated community, an early Norse settlement, living off seabirds and collective crofting for more than one thousand years which reads as Scotland's version of a lost jungle tribe. Undoubtedly embellished in the telling, it was regarded as a beacon of Scottish hardiness and adaptation to harsh climate in adversity. Sadly, the steamer trips that brought curious tourists to gawp also brought infections to which the islanders had little immunity and led to their forced evacuation from St Kilda in 1930.  St Kilda remains Europe's most important seabird colony and is a UNESCO World Heritage site but still lands only a handful of visitors each year.

Annan Gallery Ltd  164 Woodlands Road, Glasgow. G3 6LL map

0141 332 0028 | gallery@annanart.com | www.annanart.com

Tue-Sat 10-5.30, Sun 12-4