News — environment

Lucy Gray has a degree in Fine Art Sculpture from Central Saint Martins, London. Informed by the lochs, mountains, and woodland of Scotland's West Coast, Gray draws from both the physicality and the emotiveness of her surroundings. Synthesising the many textures and shapes that make up the landscape with thoughts and feelings generated while immersed in it, Gray's sculpture is a poetic parlance between the artist and the land.

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.

For Benjamin West, collage is about making a statement. Like the Dadaists who pioneered collage as a medium to socially and politically provoke, Benjamin uses his practice to raise questions about the human impact on the environment. Juxtaposing fragments from botanical reference books with images of machinery, motorways and factories, Benjamin brings into plain sight the ugliness of urban expansion, land conversion and loss of habitat.