In our Google-led lives, looking at a subject in depth is, by definition, blurry round the edges. With a smartphone in our pockets, we are all a click away from a range of subjects as finite as the universe.

As we have seen in the last couple of weeks following on from the fire which engulfed the dear old Mackintosh Building at the Glasgow School of Art, democratic access to information does not always lead to clarity.

After visiting The Tatha Gallery’s new Depth of Field exhibition last weekend, I Googled the definition of depth of field. I duly discovered that it means the “zone of acceptable sharpness within a photo that will appear in focus.”

In the world of fine art, acceptable sharpness doesn’t always make for a powerful picture. It’s something more gut-driven. In this exhibition, paintings and prints by Kate Downie, Paul Furneaux and Helen Glassford mingle with ceramics by Tanya Gomez. All work in different ways to create versions of the landscape they find while going about their business.

For Helen Glassford, raw feeling powers every mark she makes.“Landscape will forever inspire and energise me,” she says. “Yet it is too small a word for what really inspires my paintings. I marvel at the sheets of rain heading towards me, become entranced by the haze of light appearing and then disappearing as weather systems travel through regardless of human presence. It is this raw and undiluted experience and the need to communicate it to others that captivates me and inspires me to paint.”

Glassford, who runs Tatha Gallery in Newport-on-Tay with her business partner, Lindsay Bennett, is in a perfect position to create – and curate – work which is driven by the scene that greets her every day in the gallery. Situated on a headland overlooking the silvery River Tay and over to Dundee, Tatha Gallery presents a constantly changing vista has seeped into Glassford’s art.

Working in oil on board, Glassford manages to convey layers of weather, land, sea and memory in a smooth veneer of texture and colour. Not for her mad dashes and dollops of oil paint. There is a level of control in all her work, which defies definition. Although a sense of place is imbued within every painting, none of the works on show are titled with an actual place. With titles such as Sound, Deference, Dissolve and Calm Sea, these scenes are every place and no place.

In Sound for example, shades of gloomy grey blur into a deep blue, as rain clouds release bright sheets of rain into calm waters below. In Deference, Glassford immersed herself in the changeable weather systems of the isle of Tiree, wanting to capture the dazzling shafts of light that broke through the dramatic skies and cast reflections on the wet sands at her feet.

Kate Downie, by contrast, is possessed of a quicksilver, almost psychic touch in her approach to creating paintings. No-one can touch Downie for deftness, especially in watercolour. The work on show here has overtones of her recent extended stays in China yet it is solidly rooted in Scotland.

In large paintings such as The Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter and The Crofter’s Son Downie, merges east and west. In place of the Chinese seal-style printing stamp signature she employs in the watercolour on Xuan paper, Study for Three Rock Pools (Ardnamurchan), Downie has swapped the seal for the paint-print of an old glove found at the site where she made the painting. Beside the glove she has daubed five fingerprints in different colours.

There are some virtuoso Downies on show here, including the tiny yet exquisite Fog Horn Study which picks out the vivid red of the foghorn shown in the larger The Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter. When I was there it was still on sale for £320 but with this fog horn-style announcement, it might disappear faster than a smirr of Tayside rain.

Paul Furneaux, like Downie, is also drawn to the east in the media he uses and to the west Highlands for his subject matter. Using the Japanese watercolour woodblock printing technique, mokuhanga, in which watercolour is used as opposed to oil-based inks, he has created exquisite landscapes.

In works such as Distant Hills, he injects the colours of the west Highlands into the process, conveying the softness of rain-smirched Highland landscape. In more abstract works such as Grey Rain-Sun he subtly knits in a very personal response to climate change into the scene.

As a counterpoint to the landscapes on the wall, ceramicist Tanya Gomez makes cool and solid porcelain vessels in vividly definite scarlets and yellows before going to the dark side with unglazed upturned pots which feel a bit blurry. There is depth and there is depth of field in this exhibition. All of it pleasing to this pair of eyes.

Depth of Field, Tatha Gallery, 1 High Street, Newport, Fife, DD6 8AB, 01382 690800, www.tathagallery.com. Until August 18, Closed Tue & Sun, 10.30am,-5pm.

CRITIC'S CHOICE

The idea of an art car boot sale sounds just what the doctor ordered, especially when the work on sale is by more than a hundred contemporary artists with a Glasgow connection. Step forward; Beagles and Ramsey, Claire Barclay, Christine Borland, Ilana Halperin, Kate V Robertson, Toby Paterson, Helen De Main, Michael Fullerton, Luke Fowler, Jim Lambie, Tessa Lynch, France-Lise McGurn, Ciara Phillips, Ross Sinclair, Gregor Wright, Erica Eyres, Susannah Stark and some of the Glasgow’ School of Art's finest recent graduates.

The Art Car Boot Sale will take place next weekend at SWG3 in Finnieston, Glasgow, and with art priced from £5 to £500 there's the chance for everyone to find something they love so much they want to take it home.

The 2017 sale welcomed more than 4,000 people and generated around £100,000 for the local arts economy, including artists and picture framers. It also cooked up a roaring trade for street food vendors. This year’s event will add DJs and cocktail bars into the mix.

Organiser Patricia Fleming, said: “We have fabulous contemporary artists in Scotland, it’s one of our greatest cultural assets, and we want to make it really easy and fun for people to start or build collections. The car boot sale atmosphere is really relaxed and you get to meet the artists and chat to them about their work and their lives. People really loved it last year."

She added: “Artists need to be able to sell their work and the public often find galleries intimidating, so they need places and events where they feel comfortable to go, browse and buy.

“Here, they get to see an eclectic mix of affordable unique works and limited editions straight from the studio by artists selling out of the boots of Glasgow’s finest art transport; camper vans, cars, transits and bikes.

“In future, we’d love to hold events like this all round the country and help develop the new wave of collectors that would do so much to secure the future of Scotland’s contemporary arts.”

Art Car Boot Sale, SWG3, 100 Eastvale Place, G3 8QG, 0141 337 1731, www.swg3.tv/events/2018/july/hypermarket-art-car-boot. Sat July 7, 11am-6pm and Sun July 8, 12pm-6pm

DON'T MISS

The 150th anniversary of the birth of artist, designer and architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh has been hard to avoid. Not least of all because of the devastating fire which all but consumed his masterwork building in Garnethill, just a stone's throw from Glasgow Art Club. For this exhibition, which opened a week before the fire, artist and designer Siobhan Healy presents four distinct, yet connected bodies of work in which she invites the viewer to consider the legacy of Mackintosh and his wife Margaret MacDonald Mackintosh.

This exhibition is part of the Inspired by Mackintosh Collection, an ongoing research and development project by Healy. The collection is composed of depictions of flora and fauna with linear flowing form, which defined the original Glasgow Style; developed by Mackintosh and Margaret and inspired by the Art Nouveau movement.

Siobhan Healy – Inspired By Mackintosh, The Glasgow Art Club, 185 Bath Street, Glasgow, G2 4HU, 0141 248 5210, www.glasgowartclub.co.uk/. Ends today, 11am-5pm