VISUAL ARTS SCOTLAND ANNUAL OPEN EXHIBITION ****
SOCIETY OF SCOTTISH ARTISTS ANNUAL EXHIBITION ***
JACKIE ANDERSON: AFTER CARNIVAL ****
ROYAL SCOTTISH ACADEMY, EDINBURGH A COUPLE of weeks ago, at Glasgow Art Fair,
I saw so much art by so many artists that after a while my eyes gave up relaying the information back to my brain. The current triple bill at the RSA is wont to induce the same feeling.
At this time of year, three of Scotland's leading exhibiting societies, the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour (RSW), Visual Arts Scotland (VAS) and the Society of Scottish Artists (SSA), jointly occupy the building for four weeks. Like the Art Fair, this is both an annual showcase and a selling show. But even a building like the RSA starts to look small with three major societies all showing more than 200 works.
Although some artists appear in more than one of them, each show has its own distinct character. The RSW is the most traditional of the three, being purely wall-based, and has the most work in traditional genres (Prince Charles is one of their guest artists). If there was to be a preponderance of meandering shorelines, boats bobbing in harbours and vases of flowers, it would be here.
That said, the RSW has long since branched out from pure watercolour to embrace a range of other media, and there is much to admire within the traditional forms: Jean B Martin's still life Reflections of the Orient; Anne Skinner's evocative Memories: Venice Gold; Chris Bushe's impressive night-time seascape; Gary Anderson's fresh take on the artist's table.
Ian McKenzie Smith's bright abstract contrasts with Victoria Crowe's subtly realised Winter Icon, which contrasts again with the vibrant colours of Barbara Rae's South West from Granada.
James McNaught's sinister little street scenes from Belgium intrigue, while Angus McEwan is a skilled painter with a lot to say. Susan Mitchell's dancing ostrich raises a welcome smile, while Rosemary Taylor's There Are No Winners stands out (as does Connie Simmers's Sub-Prime in the VAS show) because it is one of the few works to engage with contemporary issues.
The VAS, meanwhile, embraces a much broader range of media, including applied arts – jewellery, textiles, ceramics. Craig Mitchell's gloriously tongue in cheek figure Lazy Lad is the finest of several examples of the current trend in satirical ceramics.
There's a clear attempt at edginess this year with the invitation of young American artist Edith Garcia, represented in a wall-sized installation of paintings, drawings and sculpture. Works like Julia Douglas's Highly Sprung, a sculpture made out of clothes pegs, sits shoulder to shoulder with Elizabeth Waugh's more traditional Swimming Otters.
Even among the painters, Alexander Robb's superb traditional Still Life With Oil Lamp, sits next to Kirsty Whiten's strange, contemporary Yellow Widow Variously Adorned and Lex McFadyen's evocative portrait of a teenager, Like Icarus Ascending. And where else could you see Evelyn Temple's realist Capercaillie next to David Hutchison's outrageous Bower Bird made from plastic bottles and rubber tubing?
Downstairs at the SSA, which has the widest ranging membership of all, the catch includes varying degrees of conceptualism, installations, a film which seems to be about gutting fish, and knitting: Margaret Bathgate's work is coming off the needles as we watch.
While they fill every inch of the space they have, there's no escaping the fact that there's simply not enough room to go around. The works that make the most noise ( sometimes literally) will get noticed, and smaller, quieter ones risk being overlooked.
This year, the SSA show also unveils the work made during the North Sea Residencies, a series of exchanges undertaken by artists from Scotland and Norway as part of the 2008 Stavanger Year of Culture. This is an event in itself and deserves room to breathe, but it doesn't get it here. The rest is at the nearby Atticsalt Gallery.
There is plenty here to enjoy, whether the noirish photographs of Emma Macleod, the little bronze figure by Kevin Dagg or the unusual still life by Nael Hanna. But these don't command the attention like Limbo, a conglomeration of easels and stereo parts, Darth Vader masks and interference noise by three young artists with more ideas than they know how to communicate.
After all this, Jackie Anderson's paintings are like an island of calm. Anderson was the recipient of the 2007 Alastair Salvesen Scholarship administered by the RSA, and she used it to travel to Trinidad. The work which has resulted built on the style she developed in Scotland, but transposes it into a very different culture.
Her sensitively observed paintings portray those we pass on the street without noticing, whose private worlds are nevertheless as vibrant and difficult as our own. The work entitled 1.25-1.26 aims to capture the people one passes in the street in one minute: a workman with his shirt off, a student, a child; all fading and merging as if in a slow motion film.
Anderson paints on cotton, which gives her brush strokes softness. Her traditional palette of pale greys and blues has turned warmer, to beige and gold, in the Trinidad light. She is very good at capturing how the light falls on a figure, the way clothes hug the shape of a body or highlight a posture. She knows, like a writer, that the right descriptive detail makes a character breathe.
In a larger painting, Chaguanas, a middle-aged woman and a young man, probably a high school student, walk towards us. He is in a hurry, his body pushing forward out of the painting. She is resigned to travel at the pace her weight, and the heat, dictates. Her mind is elsewhere anyway, her thoughts melancholy. Anderson could not have more than glimpsed them, yet she realises them so fully we are already guessing their stories.
• The RSW, VAS and SSA exhibitions run until 17 April, Jackie Anderson until 20 April.
