Elizabeth Ann Ogilvie, Green Gallery Dollar, 53 Bridge Street, Dollar, FK14 7DJ
greengallery.com Until 27 November
EVEN as a teenager, in the 1960s, Elizabeth Ann Ogilvie was precociously talented. She won a prestigious art competition organised by the Edinburgh Festival aged 14 and a couple of years later was invited to paint a full-scale mural for a church in Edinburgh near where she grew up.
But despite attending Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design in Dundee twice, first to study painting, and years later to take a degree in Environmental Interior Design, her career as an artist was a stop-start affair.
Now, having raised a family and run her own interior design business, the Tillicoultry-based painter is having her first solo exhibition at The Green Gallery, Dollar.
Ogilvie's semi-abstract paintings present her highly personal interpretation of how an individual suffering from dementia feels when afflicted by this devastating condition. She was inspired to paint this way after watching the gradual decline of her grandfather, who suffered from Alzheimer’s.
The exhibition came about after Ogilvie went in check out the new Green Gallery in Dollar a few months ago and got chatting to owner Becky Walker.
Walker, who also runs the sister Green Gallery in Buchlyvie, explains: “Over the years I’ve got used to people coming in to the gallery and telling me they went to art school and do a bit of painting. These conversations usually end up with me explaining tactfully I am not looking to show any more artists’ work. But there was something about Elizabeth and her work.
“She told me she’d gone to art school in Dundee and then had a family, run her own interior design business and travelled a bit, absorbing art everywhere she went. She also said she’d been an assistant and worked with renowned Scottish pop art pioneer Eduardo Paolozzi in London until his death in 2005.
“Elizabeth asked if I’d have a look at her work. I was intrigued so I went to her house and I could see immediately that she had something quite special. Her work is quite abstract but the layers she creates draw you in completely. I offered her a solo show because I knew that other people would like it. I've been proved right because the reaction has been amazing.”
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