Plan A Visit
Educational Visits
Group Visits
The Scottish Borders
Bowhill House & Gardens
The Buccleuch Collection
History
Bowhill House Gardens
House Tours
Love & Respect Victorian Age Exhibition
The Adventure Playground
The Victorian Kitchen
Walking and Hiking
Wildlife & Biodiversity
Fishing
Ranger Service
Stay
Contact
Rob Hain Biography
Rob Hain attended Loughborough College of Art 1974-1977 and has been a professional artist since 1980. He works in private collections and reproductions published by Edinburgh Arts.
“There is much to be grateful for in the Scottish landscape. Its history and folklore marks out its territory. As a painter, I love to observe and try to translate these stories into visual celebrations, from the Tweed to the sea, from compulsory troosers to monumental water spirits, from fish to chips! I love the brightly painted houses of Scottish harbours and fishing ports and the people who inhabit them, each with their own tale to tell.”
Find out more:
Website: www.robhain.com
Joy Parker Biography
“I gained an MA in Contemporary Fine Art from the University of Cumbria in 2008. I use a variety of mediums, including mosaic, painting, print and sculpture to explore themes ranging from the personal to those inspired by observation and travel. Frequently I work in collaboration with my husband writer Robert Leach or my sister Lois Parker who is a glass artist. I have enjoyed a WASPS studio in Selkirk for the past 20 years.”
Find out more:
Website: www.joyparker.org
Instagram: @joyaiparker
Facebook: www.facebook.com/Joy.Parker.Art.Page
Email: joy.a.i.parker@gmail.com
Joy Parker
Alan Richmond Biography
“I am a self taught artist and have been working out of WASPS studios in Selkirk for since 2008 and would describe my work as Semi-abstract landscapes. The inspiration and motivation behind my work is summed up well in a quote by a photographer I particularly like called Saul Leiter: “I like it when one is not certain what one sees, when we do not know why the photographer has taken a picture and when we do not know why we are looking at it, all of a sudden we discover something that we start seeing. I like this confusion.” In a similar vein, I found that when you look at old and weathered paintwork – especially on abandoned boats – you start seeing what you think to be landscapes, but they’re not there at all, they just appear to be. Then I noticed that sometimes the landscape you find the boats in seems to be reflected in the paintwork of that boat. Using photographs of these, what I am endeavouring to do is to reproduce that effect, not copy it, but use it as a reference or starting point, working with ‘intentional accidents’ engineering unexpected effects. An interest in ICM (Intentional camera movement) photography is also a recent influence on my work continuing the idea of blurring the line between the imagination and reality. What the viewer brings is a personal interpretation based on their own imagination and experience.”
Find out more:
Instagram: @alanrichmondartist)
Email: alanhrichmond@gmail.com
Alan Richmond
Marjory Boyle Crooks Biography
Marjory an Edinburgh Art College Drawing and Painting graduate has been fortunate to have always worked and applied her creativity within the arts throughout her career working commercially in graphics, textiles, fashion, print, stage, film and time-based media.
The work in this exhibition is her recent enquiry into light and matter, the shared connection between all living things forever in creation. The sacredness of all that is. With each new day, forces change, grow and shift, offering the unexpected and unexplained links seen and unseen.
Find out more:
Website: www.marjoryboylecrooks.co.uk/
Instagram: @mbcrooks1
Facebook: www.facebook.com/marjory.boylecrooks
Email: marjoryboylecrooks@gmail.com
Marjory Boyle Crooks
Jim Douglas Biography
“I have had a studio in Wasps Selkirk for twenty years. My approach to making sculpture is like that of children playing with bricks to create imaginary environments. Their play is serious, subtle and meaningful. Just so for me. I construct Objects from simple components, arrange and rearrange them until I have found a unified ‘construction’ that I find both surprising and satisfying. Each has its own ‘character’. They don’t have a single meaning as such but may suggest possible meanings to the imagination. They are my ‘tools for thinking’.”
Find out more:
Instagram: @jdoug.9876
Fiona Miller Biography
I am a self-taught painter and picture framer. I have been working from WASPS studios in Selkirk for the last 16 years. I work mostly in acrylic, occasionally creating texture with collage and gold leaf. My work is hugely influenced by my time spent as a child in Dumfries and Galloway. A great deal of my inspiration comes from the Glasgow Boys and Glasgow Girls, as well as the Arts & Crafts movement.
Find out more:
Website: www.fionamillarartist.com
Instagram: @fionamillar_artist
Email: fionamillar04@gmail.com
Fiona Miller
Liz Douglas Biography
Liz Douglas was a painter in Wasps Selkirk from its opening until she sadly died a year ago. Her paintings here are from her studies of the Ettrick Marshes and the Whitlaw Mosses and also a direct painting in Barcelona. In the landscape she liked to paint at different scales, from wide views of the land to the microscopic. She then used this visual material in the studio to produce a distinctive body of contemporary painting. In her own words: “My aim is to produce a sense of simplicity in structure, form and colour. I sift and edit from a myriad of visual references… it is the visual reimagining of the landscape that I find compelling.” A retrospective of her art will be shown in Peebles Museum and Gallery this Autumn.
Find out more:
Website: www.lizdouglas.co.uk/
John Berry Biography
“I have been involved and concerned with the visual art for many years, firstly as an Illustrator, some animation and a little teaching. For the last twenty years I have had a studio practise working out of WASPS studios here in Selkirk. I work in a variety of mediums collage being one of them. It has been a consistent and important aspect of my practise, with its own language and lexicon collage offers a historically valid way of making visual statements. It is integral to my process that it is technology free using just basic equipment; being hand made is important and comforting. Through a learned and trusted process, mixed with plenty of curiosity I like to explore materials for their shape, colour or texture. Sometimes composing quite incongruent elements into new relationships and arrangements. These are non figurative compositions that may resonate or not. I believe art making when we fully participate, allows us to flourish, is life affirming and makes us feel good. A positive human endeavour.”
John Berry
