In January 2020, National Galleries of Scotland will exhibit JMW Turner, RSW will present the 139th Open Annual exhibition at the RSA, on the Mound.
The Birch Tree Gallery on Dundas Street will also bring back Shetland watercolour painter Peter Davis.
January always brings JMW Turner’s works to the display at the National Galleries Scotland.
These works were gifted to the Galleries by the distinguished collector Henry Vaughan. He was concerned that the works would be preserved and in his bequest he specified them to be ‘exhibited to the public all at one time, free of charge, during the month of January’. And that has been respected for over 100 years.
Why January? January is the month when the northern winter light, at its weakest, comes very low above the horizon and, in Scotland, barely clears rooftops. Is there a connection between climate and watercolour on a scientific level? It was an issue that was prominent in the late nineteenth century and even led to a Parliamentary report on the Action of Light on Watercolours by Russell and Abney in 1888.
That report concluded that certain colours were not lightfast and its findings eventually led to paint manufacturers, slowly, to adapt new standards and guidelines. However one of the offshoots of this research was the decision to display London gallery watercolours in low light.
In our own time the permanence and lightfastness of watercolours is carefully recorded and some are, perhaps, even more permanent than oil paints relying on the qualities of the pigments involved.
But coincidently, January 2020 bring other watercolour exhibitions to Edinburgh. The 139th Open Annual exhibition by Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour opened on December 29 and will run until January 30 in the Lower Galleries of Royal Scottish Academy on the Mound.
In January the Birch Tree Gallery on Dundas Street will see a return of Shetland watercolour artist Peter Davis who exhibited with the gallery in January 2019. The exhibition ‘Between Earth and Sky’ will open on January 9 and will display glass works by Angie Packer along with
Peter’s paintings.
Peter’s watercolours reveal themselves slowly. The transparency of layers and clearly visible edges of each wash give a feeling of them being ‘easy to read’ and understand. Perhaps that simplicity, the absence of unnecessary detail, gives a great sense of comfort. There is nothing complicated or ‘muddled’ in Peter’s work – they truly represent Shetland’s landscape, raw and simple, composed in limited palette and defined by intersecting edges on a large scale.
The overlapping layers subconsciously take one deeper into the painting revealing greater detail of how the pigment travelled, settled and dried. Peter has no fear in allowing watercolour to do ‘its own thing’, like developing ‘marks of drying’, that some might consider as ‘lack of control’. Peter is not afraid of ‘whiteness’ of paper as a layer by itself either.
Peter said: ‘I have no wish to simply record what I see. I do not seek sedate topographies often associated with the term ‘watercolour landscapes. Instead I prefer the uncertain balance between abstraction and reality.’
A preview of ‘Between Earth and Sky’ is on Thursday, 9 January, at 7 pm. Peter Davis will also have a ‘Meet the Artist seated talk on Saturday, 11 January, registration at peterdavis2020.eventbrite.co.uk.
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