At Birch Tree Gallery – Snowy Scotland

Exhibition ‘Snowy Scotland’ is intended to bring back joyful memories of white landscapes.

Mixed winter exhibition ‘Snowy Scotland’ will be on display until 23 December 2020.

If you live in the Central Belt of Scotland, snow rarely graces you with its presence, perhaps with the exception of the ‘Beast from the East’ a few years ago… Yet there are plenty of places in the North of Scotland, where one can see snowy mountaintops and frosted trees.

Birch Tree Gallery asked artists to rummage through their sketchbooks and recall wintry landscapes in their mind’s eye.

The response resulted in a variety of works in sizes and media ranging from prints to acrylic and oil paintings on paper and canvas. Laura Boswell features wintry landscapes in her linocuts, Gregory Moore – in etchings, and Suzie MacKenzie – in collagraphs. Liz Myhill, who regularly sketches in the North of Scotland, features snowy peaks on her five new works on paper, and Glynnis Carter commits her Scottish winter memories to canvas.

Gallery owner Jurgita Galbraith has decorated the gallery with a hand made white birch tree crafted from a broken branch. She hopes it will be a bit of hope borne from creativity, persistence and ‘making something out of nothing’. Jurgita said: “It will be two weeks since I started to twist each and every twig in this white yarn. And it is not finished yet… It’s an opportunity to take something that was discarded – a simple broken tree branch that I found a few houses down from where I live – and turn it into an installation of a white birch tree. It is a metaphor for how with positive thinking we can find beauty in ordinary and ‘discarded’ objects and turn them into something to enjoy and cheering.” Click here for an Instagram story showing Jurgita decorating the tree.

As you can see in the photos, Jurgita lights a candle each day she is on the premises in the lantern which hangs just below the gallery sign.

Carol Sinclair picks up on the theme by creating black porcelain pieces with white ‘snow’ inlays. Gill MacMillan created a new ‘Landscape’ porcelain series with metallic-glaze decorations in subtle green-blue shades. Gill also added puffin, greenfinch, thrush and sparrow to her always popular hanging-decoration collection that also includes angels. A hand-made tea-light holder might be just the right accent to brighten the long winter evenings.

The gallery is open without an appointment offering a wide selection of unique hand-made objects and paintings at a range of prices. Regular hours through December are 11 – 4 pm, Wednesday to Saturday, but Jurgita will gladly welcome you later in the evening or on Tuesday, by appointment. 

art@ birchtreegallery.co.uk or Tel 0131 556 4000