Artist Statement

 

The Highland landscape is for me a poetic subject. 

 

My memories are an important source for my work, however it is when these impressions are translated through the language of paint and other mixed media that I feel that my images become some thing more than traditional Scottish landscape painting.

 

The process by which these images are made is very important to me.  The process ranges from physically throwing paint and pigment onto the canvas to delicately drawing and rendering images.

 

Although the figure is abandoned in my work I consider it to be very much about a human relationship to the landscape.

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Art Education

 

Bachelor of Arts (1st Class Honours), ECA

Master of Fine Art, ECA

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Awards   

 

Queens Anniversary Award 

Travel Scholarship, Andrew Grant Fund

D.M. Hall Centenary Competition, 2nd Prize

Landscape Award, Royal Scottish Academy

Judges Commendation, Highland Open

Materials Scholarship, Andrew Grant Memorial Fund

Scottish Arts Council Lottery Award

Awards to Artists, Highlands and Islands Arts and Scottish Arts Council

PSYBT, Business Start Up Award and Exhibition Assistance Grant

Conveyors Prize, Highland Open

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News

 

Currently working towards a Solo Exhibition, at Browns Gallery, Inverness.

Email info@wendysutherland.com to receive updates.

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Selected Press

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It would be hard to find a painter more imbued with a sense of what makes the Highlands and islands so different from any other place in the world.

Edwin Riddell, Artists and Illustators 

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Wendy Sutherland paints in a way that is reminiscent of William Johnstone’s great abstract landscapes.

Duncan MacMillan, The Scotsman

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The depth of feeling and beauty in Wendy’s work is something to experience and mere words sell it short. Go and see it for yourself, if you can.

Stephanie Burness, Am Bratach

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She paints in two starkly contrasting styles. Some paintings are vivid landscapes, explosions of colour capturing the light and shade of the Highland landscape as well as what it feels like to stand on a hillside or beside a river.

Wendy paints from an internal eye, an eye that sees both the landscape in front of her and looks inward at how she interprets those images.

Wendy's paintings are of mountains and glens, but are also intensely human - the expression of the artist in the landscape.

In contrast to the rich colours of her landscapes, Wendy often paints in a very different style. Her work in black ink represents white light seen through a screen of branches and twigs woven into a complex and almost oppressive pattern. It's so different from the style of her other work, that people who've been to her exhibitions have thought the work of two different artists' on the walls.

Wendy paints the hills and the sea, wind and rain, cold and sun light. What she really paints is her love of the landscape. Try as it may, the Highland winds will find Wendy hard to blow away.

John Burn, Channel 4 Ideas Factory

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Her brush moves with quiet confidence. Layer upon layer she works the composition, listening to what it needs. Purples and blues are mixed with linseed oil to keep them translucent and glowing, sometimes she uses varnish to resist the colour, other times shellac resin forms a textural base, hinting at geological stories beneath the surface. A stroke of Highland romance, a sweep of meteorological savagery; each application is the next step on a climb towards a summit. At the top, when the euphoria subsides, you find the diffused stillness of a perfect view.

Arlene Searle, Landward

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Nothing is left to chance by this artist. This is not easy art but its effects are as immediate as a kick in the teeth or a kiss.

Tom Bryan, Routes 

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Selected Exhibitions

 

Regularly Showing 
Browns Gallery, Inverness and Tain
Kilmorack Gallery, Beauly

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Scottish Showing

Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh

Collective Gallery, Edinburgh

Stenton Gallery, East Lothian

Gallery Heinzel, Aberdeen

Glasgow Art Fair

McLellan Galleries, Royal Glasgow Institute of Fine Art, Glasgow

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Further Showing

Francis Kyle Gallery, London

Candid Art Gallery, London

Mall Galleries, London

E1 Gallery, London

Pond Galley, London

The Gallery, London

Salt Gallery, Cornwall

Campden Gallery, Gloucestershire

Artifex Gallery, Birmingham

Atkinson Gallery, Somerset

Ogilvy and Estill, Wales

The Transit Gallery, Canada