Introducing Stuart Norman
When we first saw Stuart Norman’s paintings at the Borders Art Fair in Kelso we immediately felt they would fit perfectly here at the Old Courthouse Gallery. His work is a distinctive and attractive blend of media, with great character in his depictions of the landscape, coasts and heritage of the Borders area.
Stuart is based in Kelso in the Borders and his process involves creating observational sketches and then building layers, lines, and textures using mixed media and collage techniques in his studio. He works mainly in acrylics but has recently started exploring oil paint with cold wax medium. As a retired dentist however, he no longer works in enamel!
Our new collection of Stuart’s work covers two main themes.
Bothies: The west coast of Scotland presents a markedly different landscape to the more pastoral Scottish Borders. On trips to Ballachulish, on the West of Glencoe, Stuart has focused on exploring the old “Bothies” as they slowly decline and decay, almost being reabsorbed back into the ground. He has used acrylics, old maps and documents to collage then overpaint repeatedly, to give the sense of the history of these structures. One, locally called “Jimmy the Boot” is the old cobbler’s abode, and the other a fisherman’s bothy, surrounded by the gear and detritus of the local fish farm in Cuil bay.
Golden Fields and Purple Hills: The Scottish Borders around Kelso has a rolling pastoral quality, punctuated to the south by the cheviot Hills, which stop abruptly, marking the end of the Pennines. For many years Stuart has enjoyed cycling on the quiet back roads of the area. At harvest time, the countryside turns to a sea of gold, with the lines of tress marching like sentinels between the fields. He often takes his small sketchbooks out, giving him time to absorb the landscape. He then explores these gathered images and thoughts in the studio with oil paints and cold wax medium, allows layers to be built up and scraped back to build these paintings.
Stuart’s work is already proving very popular with our visitors. If you would like to see his work yourself, you can do so here
