'It's really soppy, but I do get very attached to exhibitions'

Getting down and dirty on the floor with one's sleeves rolled 
up is not, perhaps, the image usually associated with a senior figure at of one of the world's most highly rated art galleries. But as Strang is quick to point out, donning designer dresses and hob-nobbing with the great and good of the international art set is only one part of the job.

"I recently had to slide down a fireman's pole to get into the kitchen of a castle in Scotland. 
I had arrived wearing a rather unattractive thermal jacket, gloves and hat because it was absolutely freezing," she recalls.

"There was a gorgeous Fergusson hanging in its drawing room and I wanted to persuade the owners to lend it to me. Thankfully it was a successful visit."

As senior curator of the upcoming exhibition of the late Glasgow-based artist, Strang is responsible not only for sourcing examples of his work from private and public collections and organising their safe transportation – a delicate job that often requires tact and diplomacy – but also writing the accompanying catalogue and delivering public lectures. She has a confidentiality clause in contract of employment that forbids her to divulge information about private lenders, because the works are so valuable.

The 40-year-old mother 
of two has been dubbed the Colourist Queen, having also been in charge of the recent Samuel Peploe and JCB Cadell exhibitions in the Scottish Colourist Series at the Gallery. (An exhibition of the work of George Leslie Hunter, the fourth of the Colourists, was shown at the City Art Gallery last year.) Aberdeen became Strang's second home during the transfer of the Peploe exhibition, which opened last week and will be on show until October 19.

"The Aberdeen Art Gallery is a beautiful building and it owns some really important pieces of Peploe's work," she says. "He and Fergusson moved to Paris in 1907 and there's a lovely small interior painting which is obviously one he and Fergusson experimented with early on, before Cadell went on to make the genre his own."

It's clear she has the requisite passion for and knowledge of her subjects, yet she insists she is still learning.

Travelling to source material is a big part of her job, but sometimes the art comes to her.

"Recently I was standing in the home of a private collector in Glasgow, looking at a beautiful Fergusson statue of a female standing nude. He knew the dancer Margaret Morris, Fergusson's long-term partner, and he'd bought it in the 1960s, heard about the show and contacted me. It's a previously unknown work."

Morris's student dancers often modelled for Fergusson and their West End flat had a linking door from his studio to hers.

"The wonderful thing about doing these shows is learning how generous people are," says Strang. "They don't get paid; they do it out of sheer generosity. I got a Peploe from a guy in the South of France. He drove it over to us. It's incredible that people will go those lengths to help. I am very lucky to be the guardian of their dearest possessions."

Handling such treasures of 20th-century art for public display is the flipside of her previous life as an auctioneer 
of pieces that could fetch extortionate prices.

Leicester-born Strang moved to Edinburgh 15 years ago, having studied history of art at Cambridge University. She joined the graduate training scheme at Christie's auctioneers in London and was appointed junior specialist on their modern and impressionist evening sales. There she was involved in multi-million-pound sales of Picasso, Magritte and Klimt. She recalls the excitement of telephone bidding on behalf of wealthy international clients, and the shock of thinking she'd bought 
a Klimt at £6 million after her head of department "bounced" the bid off her to reach its reserve price. It eventually fetched a world record £14.5m.

She was promoted to the contemporary art department, which became the twentieth-century art department, with 
a focus on modern British 
artists like Nicholson, Moore and Hepworth.

"There I was, in my early twenties, living in London, and hands-on with the most amazing works of art." She was there at the birth of the British contemporary art scene, and attended the 1997 opening of the Sensation exhibition at the Royal Academy featuring the work of all the Charles Saatchi Young British Artists. "I remember thinking what a wonderful thing it was to be involved in art. It was a fantastic time and so interesting to see those artists and markets developing."

What does she think of Damien Hirst? "He's interesting, thought-provoking, challenging. I wish I'd bought one of his paintings. When I was at Christie's his classic Spot painting sold for £16,000. But at the time I was on a salary of £12,000 so he wasn't in my realm.

"Nobody goes to work in art for the money. It's a vocation."

Her Edinburgh home is full 
of art – though not with the precious floor coverings so loved by her husband Gavin, a director of the Scottish auction house Lyon & Turnbull in Glasgow who specialises in rugs and carpets. "It's much too difficult to see scattered Lego pieces over patterned rugs," she says. Instead, Scottish contemporary artworks line the walls: when her first son Robert was born, Gavin gave her an Alison McGill landscape painting; and when Thomas was born he gave her a Graeme Todd. The boys are now six and four, and speak with "thick Scottish accents".

When the Dean Gallery 
(now Modern Two) opened in Edinburgh in 1999, Strang applied for the new curatorial post that was advertised – at 
the same time applying for a similar job at what was to become Tate Modern. The Tate lost its funding, she was offered the Edinburgh job, the Tate 
re-gained its funding; but she says her decision was made, and she left home armed with only a duvet and pillow stuffed into one bag and her overnight things in another. "I didn't know Scotland at all and knew absolutely nobody," she recalls.

The couple met at a preview of watercolours to be sold by Lyon & Turnbull. She noticed Gavin because he was wearing "a stylish suit with trainers and looked quite dapper". They next met at the Glasgow Art Fair and their first date was a private view of Magritte at the then Dean Gallery.

She wore a 1939 vintage dress for her wedding ten years ago in Edinburgh; her wedding ring was also made in 1939, and was the engagement ring of Gavin's grandparents.

Asked to name her favourite painting, she demurs: "I'm really quite fickle, and it depends on the artist or group of artists I'm working on. At the moment I'm loving the early Fergusson work Dieppe, Night 1905. The fireworks display encapsulates his excitement of working side by side with Peploe, who is in the picture, while echoing Whistler's Firework Nocturne."

Dismantling an exhibition is emotional for her. "When I take the first one off the wall it's quite sad. I spend so long collecting them, and when they first come out of their crates it's fantastic. It almost feels rude how quickly the show comes down at the end. The paintings are away almost before I'm ready to say goodbye. It's really soppy, but I do get very attached."

She would love one day to show the Scottish Colourists Series in France – hopefully 
with the National Galleries 
of Scotland if the funds can 
be found.

"I think the French audience would look at them from a different angle," she says. "The Colourists spent so much of their lives in France and were so closely involved in and aware of developments in avant-garde French painting. To show their paintings of France to the French, who have grown up with Matisse, Cezanne, and so on, would be fascinating.

"I'd hope the Colourist Series could show how important 
these are in the European context too. So you see, my 
work is not quite done."