"MAKE A SCENE" - FRANCES MACDONALD

Extract from The Herald.

Frances Macdonald is getting ready for a Homecoming by Jan Patience.

To paint the landscape of Scotland's West Coast like Frances Macdonald, your soul needs to have been dipped in the icy cold waters of the Atlantic and left out to dry on a lichen-covered rock. It's one thing to be a talented artist who paints Scottish land and seascapes which look fine and dandy above a fireplace, but quite another to make the canvas hum with the force of nature that touches you when you're in among it.

Vivid colours and textures are displayed in works such as 'From my Studio, Snow Over the Corryvreckan' by Frances Macdonald.

A Macdonald painting does just that. Frances Macdonald has lived in Argyll for most of her life and has been co-proprietor with husband Nick Ryan of the famous Crinan Hotel for almost 40 years. And she knows her territory like the back of her hand. Her family connections with Argyll go back generations and now her two children, including artist Ross Ryan, have made it their base.

Macdonald's elevated studio in the tiny fishing village of Crinan may have stunning views out over to Corryvreckan and Jura which change by the minute, but she never produces a facsimile of what's in front other eyes. Using only a large palette knife, she sculpts her way into the land-scape, chiselling this way and that until choppy seas, textured rocks and rose-tinted sea pinks begin to take on a light of their own. She stopped using brushes around 15 years ago, which was the same point at which she shifted away from interiors in watercolour and gouache, which she had painted up until then.

There aren't many hotels in such a picturesque setting as the Crinan Hotel. Fewer still that have the work of one of Scotland's finest landscape painters gracing its en-suite bathrooms.

This Wednesday, her first exhibition at Edinburgh's Scottish Gallery opens and she has produced a sparkling 50-painting strong body of work for it. Alongside the land and seascapes of the West Coast and Hebrides of Scotland, she has also produced a handful of the south of France, still using her palette knife, but employing an altogether fighter spectrum of colour.

There are several painted in and around Iona, one of her favourite places. "Whenever I start to work towards an exhibition, I'd go to the north end of Iona for inspiration," she reveals.

Macdonald has enjoyed considerable success over the last decade, particularly in London, where she sells out shows at The Portland Gallery. For her, this is a homecoming of sorts. She says: "I remember vividly seeing the Joan Eardley festival exhibition in Edinburgh in 1964 and, in particular, her seascapes. I have such a strong memory of feeling so immersed in them." Some 45 years later, another fine Scottish painter is about to immerse viewers in her own unique way.

Additional Information: France Macdonald Biography

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