BARBARA RAE: LAMMERMUIR | OPEN EYE GALLERY, EDINBURGH
Barbara Rae, Night Gate, monotype, 38x38, courtesy of Open Eye Gallery, Edinburgh
Barbara Rae CBE RA, who had until 2020 been travelling widely for artistic inspiration – latterly in the Arctic - found herself grounded in Scotland by the pandemic. But what wonderful ground to be grounded in. She turned her attention to home territory: the Lammermuirs, the hills running from East Lothian to the borderlands, in the south-east of Scotland.
It is a topography pocked by man-made landmarks, perfect for Rae’s practice. Her paintings and monographs, completed in the studio from plein-air sketches, describe the palimpsest etched into the landscape by traces of agriculture, architecture, and rural industry. Bronze-age forts, ancient pathways, burnt grouse fields, wind turbines: her hills are alive with markers, ancient and modern, standing cheek by jowl, each describing a distinct historical narrative.
Her style is inspired by the abstract expressionists, either side of the Atlantic. But, as Professor Duncan Macmillan writes in the show’s excellent catalogue: ‘loyal to the idea of an art based in experience, she pulls the abstract back to the actual’.
The show is part of the Edinburgh Art Festival; the Open Eye Gallery is one of fifty or so venues participating, vying for the attention of the culture-hungry throngs filling the capital’s streets this month. By the count of the red dots, the work is selling well. Open Eye will be exhibiting at Stand 17 on the ground floor of Saatchi Gallery at British Art Fair.