Brought to you by
MORNINGSIDE GALLERY
Morningside Gallery in Edinburgh have announced a new and exciting Scott Naismith Art Exhibition which runs until June 1.
Titled ‘Duality’, the acclaimed Scottish artist follows his successful ‘Recursion ‘ last year with a brand new exhibition which is sure to delight many visitors this week to Edinburgh.
Talking about the inspiration behind Duality, Scott explained “ I portray reality on canvas. Not just visual reality but philosophical reality, emotional reality, experiential reality, spiritual reality etc. I take the visual landscape nature expresses to us in the form of visual light and filter it through concepts derived from the non-visual experiences of reality and express it in a new visual representation.
Reality in its simplest form can be understood as duality, therefore the complexity of nature can be seen as many dualities. The theory would be that duality is to nature as what binary is to computing.
Within nature there is an eternal dance between opposing forces. I take these opposing forces and analyse them one at a time in a process of simplification and embellishment to form a new visual language. Often a new body of work will be influenced by an experimentation with a particular duality of opposing forces. One of these concepts for this body of work has been dynamism vs tranquility. I have also planned the works in this show to move between muted and saturated colour. “
Born in Glasgow in 1978, Scott graduated with a a BDes (Hons) in Illustration and Printmaking from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design in 2000.
He initially took up work as an illustrator while also painting Glasgow scenes which sold so well he realised he would make a better living from his own work than by working for someone else.
His first solo exhibition in Hamilton was a success and enabled him to buy a car which he used to explore and paint the West Coast of Scotland. That has become his subject matter for the last 22 years, with Skye a particular favourite.
Overtime Scott’s work has developed from a more straightforward and representational approach to landscape painting in which the rugged coastlines and beautiful sunsets of Scotland have been shared with viewers on the canvas, to a more abstract approach now, which involves using the immediate subject of landscape to explore concepts such as recursion, which occur within it.
“I call my paintings atmospheric abstraction because I am trying to get an essence of place through an abstract approach to the work,” he said.
Although he regularly visits some of Scotland’s most spectacular places he tends to paint without any visual references in front of him.
Explanations of how he makes his work are available on his YouTube channel which was garnering 1500 views a day within a couple of years of its launch and has now registered well over three million views.
In Scott’s paintings various elements and concepts recur throughout on a variety of scales. There is the top to bottom vertical transition of light to dark, spiritual to corporeal, heaven to earth, simple to complex. In all of his work there is the sense that the micro is in the macro and vice versa, and that each small part of his painting can also be read visually to reveal the whole.
“These are fundamentally paintings of hope and light, and the sublime and awe inspiring experience of being a part of the natural world,” said Scott.
As an artist, Scott has spent his career building on and perfecting his ideas and technique. “Every exhibition has a new way of thinking about the previous ones,” he said.
‘Duality’ by Scott Naismith is on now until June 1 at Morningside Gallery in Edinburgh - 94 Morningside Road, Edinburgh, EH10 4BY
Click here for details and to view the exhibition catalogue https://www.morningsidegallery.co.uk/exhibition/scott-naismith-duality
All enquiries should be directed to the gallery on 0131 447 3041 or e-mail art@morningsidegallery.co.uk
For more details on Morningside Gallery, visit www.morningsidegallery.co.uk
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here