{"id":56394,"date":"2025-06-20T11:04:25","date_gmt":"2025-06-20T10:04:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artmag.co.uk\/?p=56394"},"modified":"2025-06-20T11:04:29","modified_gmt":"2025-06-20T10:04:29","slug":"the-return-of-the-paintbrush","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artmag.co.uk\/the-return-of-the-paintbrush\/","title":{"rendered":"The Return of the Paintbrush"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As Scotland\u2019s art schools stage their annual graduate showcases, one thing is clear: painting is making a comeback. Susan Mansfield visited all four colleges to select highlights for Artmag readers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If optimism were electricity, we could power the national grid by the energy of the students graduating from Scotland\u2019s four main art schools. As the art colleges in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee and Aberdeen open their doors to showcase emerging talent, the air positively bristles with hope and creative potential.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2025 is a bumper year, in part due to students who deferred their enrolment during the pandemic. This group arrived at art school with the pent-up energy of lockdown, ready to be hands-on, learn new skills and make work on an ambitious scale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019ve noticed this year is the ambition in working at scale,\u201d says Pernille Spence, programme director of Fine Art at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design in Dundee. \u201cIt dropped because of covid, students were terrified to scale anything up. If you\u2019re going to make big work, this is the time to do it, when you\u2019ve got the space to go a little bit wild.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While this year group have proved their adeptness at many things, from throwing pots to building electronic circuits, one strand is particularly strong: more students are painting than in any year for the last two decades. And while undergraduate painting can be a hit-or-miss affair, more students are painting well, and committing themselves to developing their skills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although there is a corresponding drop in electronic and lens-based media, all of life is here, as it always is. The trick at art school is to find your creative voice, the language in which you want to express yourself, then go out into the world and make your work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, Dundee<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dundee\u2019s art school is always first off the starting blocks in degree show season. Duncan of Jordanstone tends to be strong on skills and this year\u2019s cohort of graduates have embraced the opportunity to learn as many as possible. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cArriving towards the end of the pandemic, they wasted no time getting the benefit of all the workshops we have here, from casting in bronze to 3D Design,\u201d says Spence. \u201cSome of them have used almost every workshop.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Duncan of Jordanstone often produces good painters, but the number of students painting this year was the first indication that this was going to be a vintage year for painting across the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tom Speedy is a confident painter, working at scale on canvases as wide as his armspan. Capturing figures in landscapes, drifting or displaced, he works with strong colour and experiments with mixing directly on the canvas then disrupting the paint with abrasive substances like bleach, turpentine and even sand. Anney White is another ambitious painter, making large abstract pieces full of energy and colour, which are arranged in groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several of the female students are interested in reclaiming the painting of the female body, subjected to the male gaze throughout the history of Western art. Emma Pirrie\u2019s nudes are women wrapped up in their own thoughts, resisting the gaze of the onlooker, while Eilidh Pirie works with a similar theme in her excellent large-scale pastel drawings, subverting the trope of the \u2018reclining woman\u2019 by reclaiming the bedroom as a space for rest, contemplation and fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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If you\u2019re going to make big work, this is the time to do it, when you\u2019ve got the space to go a little bit wild.\u201d – Pernille Spence, programme director of Fine Art, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Kayley Mullen is a fine traditional painter, painting landscapes en plein air<\/em> in Scotland and Spain, and impressive studio portraits inspired by mythical figures such as Pandora and Persephone. Jenna Donald\u2019s paintings quietly capture people engaged in ordinary tasks. I particularly enjoyed her paintings of women painting and decorating while their children play with paintbrushes on the floor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hannah Maguire found her artistic voice through inventing a Scottish pop star, Roxie Burns, and charting her rise and fall through photography and printmaking. Lisa Speirs Fleming explores the emotional strangeness of early motherhood through a collection of impressive linocuts and woodcuts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Robin Faye made a 30-minute opera based on Kafka\u2019s Metamorphosis<\/em>, making the sets and costumes, recruiting the singers from Dundee University\u2019s Opera Society and capturing the whole piece on film. Christopher Adam\u2019s 45-minute film An Guth\/The Voice<\/em> is both satirical and profound, looking at language, belonging and traditional music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are wonders on a small scale too, such as Poppy Gannon\u2019s pieces made by cutting and stitching dried leaves and displaying them in custom-made ceramics. Joy Jennings has made a multitude of small figures, The Formables, in various colours, weights and textures, and encourages visitors of all ages to play with them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Show now ended. Online showcase: https:\/\/www.dundee.ac.uk\/graduate-showcase<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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