News — nature

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.

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.

Our first artist interview of 2021 is with Emily Unsworth White, a painter, collagist and textile artist living and working in Bristol. Her multi-disciplinary practice explores nature as a holy sanctum, drawing on themes of religion, fellowship and storytelling. With a palette of natural hues and pigments, materials such as sheep's wool, twine and hand-dyed fabric, Emily's body of work holds connotations of the primordial. Forming a serene cosmos of flora, fauna, paganism and ethereal figures, Emily depicts nature as a sublime otherworld- something or somewhere to be cherished and worshipped.