News — Abstract

This year, Carol Douglas was invited by the Yorkshire Sculpture Park to present a solo exhibition of work. The show, called Actually I Can, presents 51 paintings that are about the everyday, portraying household objects and people in domestic settings.

We have a whole new collection of paintings by Sarah J. Stanley, a Glasgow-based artist whose work explores themes of religious dogma and subservience. Blocks, bricks, grids, ladders, and stairs are commonplace in Stanley's painterly lexicon. They form boundaries, pathways and even cages, evoking ideas of confinement and coercion- a feeling known only too well by Stanley. She grew up in a family of Christian fundamentalists. Extreme and cult-like, with no time for anything but Church and bible studies, her childhood was void of play and deviance.

We are delighted to present new work by multi-award-winning artist Patricia Paolozzi Cain. Based in rural Dumfries and Galloway, Patricia Paolozzi Cain's often large-scale works of art form an active and shaping force that exists between the artist and her physical environment. Tangled tree branches, dense hedgerows, a fusion of fallen leaves, sedges and thickets are the preamble to Paolozzi Cain's abstracted compositions. Getting lost in nature's cosmos is for Paolozzi Cain a means to look inward, to introspect. In her own words, she says, "I focus on nature as a gateway to the internal mind." Using a process of intense scrutiny, where she transposes and edits what she sees before her, Paolozzi Cain turns observations into a rich, meditative language that is as much rooted in place as it is in consciousness.

If you follow Broth, it won't surprise you that one of my favourite things to do is visit artists at their studio. Call me a nosy parker but stepping into an artists workspace is for me like entering Ali Baba's cave- you never know what riches you're going to find. Fiona MacRae's studio in rural Argyll is one such place that never disappoints. Tucked away up a meandering track in mossy woodland, Fiona's studio is a treasure trove of spectacles.Having beachcombed her entire life, Fiona MacRae's studio is a shrine to both natural and man-made forms scavanged from the shoreline. There are whalebones, coloured sea glass, mermaid purses, driftwood and calcified sea creatures, but also a confetti of plastic odds and ends, corroded rubber and knarled bits of oxidised metal. Wherever you look, there's something to marvel at.

Over the years, it has become abundantly clear that beachcombing is an important part of MacRae's practice. It works its way- albeit surreptitiously- into her paintings by means of colour, texture and form, and is used directly in her assemblage artwork. For this reason, I was curious to learn more about her love of beachcombing, how it informs her art-making and where it all started.

Read on to discover more about Fiona MacRae and her delightful art.

Kathy McCarthy makes sculptures in a variety of materials including clay, jesmonite, fiberglass and wood. She says, “The physicality of materials and making objects has increasingly yet slowly grown more important to me. Whether it is clay with its malleable and slippery texture or fibreglass with its strength and rigid texture, I struggle, tear apart, stick and rebuild to invent a place where only these materials can belong.”