The Power of Twelve currently lurks around every crevice of Mount Stuart on the Isle of Bute. Not only has Turner Prize-nominated artist, Christine Borland, titled her new exhibition in this Neo-Gothic mansion around the number, she has also created a dozen new artworks as a response to a portion of the building's history during which it served as a naval hospital during the First World War.

The Argyll-based artist is currently deeply embedded in the process of remembering the "war to end all wars" as we head towards the centenary of Armistice Dav in November. As well as this new work at Mount Stuart, a major commission for Glasgow Museums as part of the UK-wide 14-18 Now programme will be unveiled in October. Part of the research for this commission, which has given Borland unprecedented access to Glasgow Museums World War One Collection, has spilled into her new work on Bute.

Borland has form in Mount Stuart. In 2003, two years into the Mount Stuart Trust's rolling visual arts programme, she was one of the first artists invited to respond to the house and its collections. Since then, her work has developed and matured, but beauty coupled with underlying layers of meaning waiting to be discovered by the viewer remain a fixture of her art.

The first Borland artwork encountered by visitors to Mount Stuart is called to The Power of Twelve, with Moss Pillow. This beautiful work is nestled in the Marble Hall, the domed centrepiece of Mount Stuart.

Superficially, without a back story, it is a beautiful thing to behold. We see a large circle, framed by a pink "pillow". Inside this space, there's a host of glass spheres of varying sizes. Light from twelve stained glass windows depicting the signs of the zodiac, refracts onto 144 glass balls. Sweep up the grand stair case where the house's bedrooms are nestled around vaulted Gothic arches which soar some 80 feet into the air and you can look down on the work, which changes as the summer sun moves its position.

You do not need to know the background to the work, but once you do know, it sheds light on so many aspects of both the building and the First World War.

Delve into twelve and you realise the number influences not only influences the structure of this building, but our culture, our lives, our religious calendars and our superstitions. Our bodies have twelve pairs of ribs and the old imperial measurements have as measuring twelve inches to a foot.

In this work alone, the pool of glass spheres is based on a twelve metre deep crater made by a series of mines exploded on the Messines Ridge in Flanders in 1917. Borland has created a pool here which is one twelfth of scale of the surviving crater in Belgium, now filled with rainwater and preserved as a peace memorial.

The 144 (12 X 12) glass buoys make you think of the wounded sick sailors who were once tended in the Marble Hall. From October 1914, it served as Mount Stuart Auxiliary Hospital's Middle Ward, accommodating 50 beds for injured seamen.

What must these men, most of whom were from humble backgrounds, have made of the opulent surroundings in which they found themselves? I have a vision of a sick sailor coming to and gazing up at the domed roof and the beautiful stained glass thinking that possibly he had died and gone to heaven.

Like every piece of art I have seen made by Borland, there is beauty and a deeper meaning wrapped around the work. The devastating touch is the moss pillow. This circular frame, cut from the hem of a pink parachute which hangs in a conservatory upstairs, contains sphagnum moss, or bog moss. The antiseptic qualities of this moss saw it being used in hospitals and in households to dress wounds.

The upstairs conservatory, a glazed room which sits off the Horoscope Bedroom, served as an operating theatre during World War One. This is where the bright pink army-surplus parachute hangs like a giant inverted tropical flower. Notes provided by Borland tell us that Moss Depository is a training 'chute which has also been stuffed with sphagnum. The shape and colour echoes the inverted shape of a moss-fruiting body releasing a seed, as depicted in the illustrations of moss which Borland found in the third Earl of Bute's own Botanical Tables illustrated by Johann Sebastian Müller in 1785.

In a building like Mount Stuart artworks can fight against the house, which is a feat of architectural wonder, stuffed with works of art, notably British portraiture from the sixteenth and seventeenth century, as well as work by Dutch and Flemish masters. That's before you factor in antique furniture, silverware, porcelain and 25,000 books.

The building was extensively remodelled over three decades following a fire in the original Georgian mansion house in 1877. Renovation work started by the third Marquess of Bute was taken over by his son, the fourth Marquess. Work finished in 1912 and the house was offered to the War Office as hospital accommodation on the outbreak of war in 1914. The twelve new Borland works are presented throughout Mount Stuart. There are additional works in the swimming pool (said to be the world's first heated swimming pool), the Dining Room (WW1 surgical ward), the Armoury, the Gun Room and the Horoscope Bedroom.

It is a testament to Borland's work that it holds its own in such an environment. I found myself trying to separate the building and its treasures from the Borlands in my own head in order to give it the space needed to digest and process it all. Further layers were added for me personally when I realised that my great-grandfather, a native of Bute called Angus Middleton, was night watchman in Mount Stuart during the period it served as a hospital.

This nugget of information had been sitting in a box of old papers in my home for years but it took a visit to see To the Power of Twelve to nudge me into wondering where my own family fitted into a wondrously beautiful set of conundrums opened up by the ever-curious, ever-inventive Christine Borland.

Christine Borland: To the Power of Twelve, Mount Stuart, Isle of Bute PA20 9LR, 01700 503877, http://www.mountstuart.com/culture/visual-arts/. Until Nov 18. Open daily

CRITIC'S CHOICE

When Patricia Cain won both The Threadneedle Prize and the now-defunct Aspect Prize for painting in 2010, what struck me about her work was painstaking eye for structural detail in buildings and objects. It was as though, in looking at the way they were constructed, she was working out the never-ending puzzle of life itself.

A subsequent exhibition in Glasgow's Kelvingrove, Drawing on Riverside, examined the construction phase of Zaha Hadid's Riverside Museum and was widely praised. Her latest body of work, Seeing Beyond the Ordinary, has been shown in Dumfries and Hawick before opening last weekend at The Lillie Gallery in Milngavie.

The genesis of the show was a three-month residency in 2013 at the St Andrews home of Wilhelmina Barns-Graham (1912-2004) before it was sold.

There has been a sea change in Cain's work which hits you the minute you walk into the first space in the Lillie. In the centre a large section of a leafless tree hangs from the rafters. All around are works which depict the natural world in infinitesimal detail. Four large pastel panels hang side-by-side, densely populated by the foliage of a forest. It's as though you are inside the forest. There is a definite structure – referring back to her detailed drawings of buildings – but it is much more free-slowing. The hard-edges have gone. Replaced by something gentler.

Other collage works are pared-back and blocky; a nod to Barns-Graham without following slavishly in her wake. Displaying them next to examples of Barns-Graham's boldly confident abstract prints invites favourable comparison.

Cain, a former lawyer, has always been driven by a need to communicate with the viewer. The teacher in her wants them to engage with the creative process of an artist who switches between representational and abstract artworks. I very much liked her recreation of her studio walls, which gives a deeper insight into how she constantly strives to create simplicity from complex subjects.

Patricia Cain: Seeing Beyond The Ordinary, Lillie Art Gallery, Station Road, Milngavie, Glasgow G62 8BZ0141 956 5536, https://www.edlc.co.uk/heritage-arts/exhibitions/lillie-art-gallery-exhibitions. Until Aug 9, Tue-Sat, 10am–1pm, 2pm-5pm

DON'T MISS

Since it launched in 2015, the North Coast 500 – dubbed Scotland's Route 66 – has been a hit with tourists from home and abroad. For this show at Glasgow's Annan Gallery, award-winning artists Judith Bridgland and Anne Morrison have interpreted the landscape of the route in different ways. Bridgland is known for her vibrantly-coloured and energetic painting style. Working mostly in oil, she depicts sweeping west coast shorelines and the mountains of Wester Ross and Sutherland on canvas. Morrison's pared-back ceramic sculptures and studio pottery offer an elegant counterpoint. Her smoothly sensual white Raku crackleware pieces and new coloured slip works balance the vivacity of the paintings. Morrison has created more sculptural pieces which incorporate found objects and natural driftwood, gathered from beachcombing expeditions along the coast.

North Coast Gems: Judith I. Bridgland with Anne Morrison, Annan Gallery, 164 Woodlands Road, Glasgow G3 6LL, 0141 332 0028, http://www.annanart.com/. Until July 22, Tue-Sat, 10-3.30pm, Sun, 12-4pm