The Aizle Collective of artists observe our human and natural world with imaginative, atmospheric vision @ Dundas Street Gallery.
Aizle: A Scottish word for a glowing hot ember; a spark. In the Philippines it means beauty.
This debut exhibition by five distinctly diverse, innovative artists presents a rather dazzling showcase, focussing on their experimental use of palette, pattern, texture and technique.
Inspired by the rural environment, Kirstine Drysdale captures the raw, physical elements in abstract land and seascapes. Incline seems to represent the geographical structure of a slice of hillside below a cloudy sky, through muted earthy, coral and tobacco browns with bright splashes of yellow, aqua and icy white.
Simply crafted in ink blots and stains is Tempest, a diamond-shaped kaleidoscope of lightening cracks and swirling storm with an iridescent glow. (see image below).
As if viewing through a microscope, Seaweed presents a translucent, fluid study of glistening water, slippery green foliage and lichen-wrapped stones in a shallow rock pool.
Kirstine also collaborates in art work with fellow Aizle artist, Rod Malloch, each taking turns to apply oil paint and cold wax, building up and blending the surface until they agree it’s finished. Craig means a rugged hill in Scots and Black Craig is pared back smoothly to a sheer veneer of the craggy rockface.
Kirriereoch Hill is a hill in the intriguingly named Range of the Awful Hand range in the Southern Uplands featuring a small, shallow, square shaped, freshwater trout loch, part of the Wood of Cree Nature Reserve. Their cool, composed landscape, beautifully shaped and shaded, is like an aerial bird’s eye view of the scene.
Having viewed the Paperworks exhibition during the Edinburgh Festival Fringe over recent years, Trevor Davies is a versatile artist, accomplished in figurative sketches, still life, abstract designs, paper craftwork and sculptured collage.
The Italian photographer, Tina Madotti moved to Mexico in 1923 to join Kahlo, Rivera et al, where she perfected poetic studies of the the political intellectuals and creative labour such as ‘Worker’s Hands’ (1927).
Trevor Davies pays tribute to this portrait in Time to Rest, a delicate sketch in oil of the gardener’s dusty, sunburnt hands clasped over the handle of a spade. The juxtaposition of the background frame – a broken wedge of weathered, paint-spattered driftwood – neatly evokes the imagined scene of Madotti’s snapshot moment as the old man takes a break from digging the ground in the midday sun.
Davies is fascinated by using salvaged objects, scraps and fragment traces of human activity: “ there’s something of the old, worn, used, discarded, things half-hidden, marks left behind newly discovered.”
Memories Contained is a charming sculptured piece featuring a row of tiny rolls of paper with printed text and handwritten notes crafted from found materials. To illustrate the meticulous collage effect of oil paint and salvaged wood is Autumn Rain, with its scraped shards of gold leaves against a murky grey sky. (see below).
With an abstract expressionist air of freedom, two Rothko-esque paintings, Light Air and Dark Air, express the simplified purity of monochrome pale and dark colours on canvas. But look closer.
Within a billowing buttercream cloud in Light Air, is a slender slice of lime amidst a flurry of thick flowing streaks revealing soft pink and grey layers beneath. Likewise Dark Air could depict a thunderstorm with its flash of light in a rain filled sky. A contrasting double act ideally purchased as a pair of minimalist masterpieces.
Ronald Binnie specialises in painting, photography and printmaking as well as undertaking professional academic work into the understanding of non-human species. He has also studied the extraordinary visual effect when flocks of starlings form a Murmuration, one of nature’s true spectacles seen during the winter months.
This phenomenon is illustrated in a dramatic triptych, Murmuration 1, with its swirling swarm of birds in an aerial dance across the sky in a constant shape-shifting, circular sweeping motion. While at a distance, the effect is a dark mass, each starling is just a tiny tick, exquisitely sketched in black graphite on white paper.
Do visit the gallery to see this mesmerising artwork up close and personal to see the fine detail.
There’s also a different series of starling cloud patterns, crafted in a trio of digital monotypes.
Adapting the iconic silhouette of the starling in flight, in Murmurations 111 Binnie has designed geometric black, grey and red crown shapes of the bird wings overlaid on the original graphite drawing as a monoprint. This motif is also used in traditional quilt making.
Ronald Binnie combines his ornithological knowledge of murmurations – an activity which takes place to confuse and intimidate predators – with the technique of drawing, printmaking and digital imagery, to explore connections between nature and culture. Sir David Attenborough would surely be impressed.!
Catherine Barnes pursues artistic experimentation through photography, collage, paintings and prints to document the landscape. Island features several perspectives of seashore and sky with moody light and three scenic views of Autumn Landscape over hill, river, field and woodland are in miniature detail.
Specialising in the mixed media of oil paint and cold wax to form a thick impasto surface, Rod Malloch captures the wild environment of the Scottish Highlands and Islands. All the ancient Gaelic place names are so poetic such as Muchairt, Smigeadail and Dhudhhaich. Loch Bharradail with its three rivers is located in a remote glen on Islay, simply illustrated as a patchwork pattern to denote the barren landscape.
Drolsay is a bleak but beautiful moorland with a fishing loch on Islay surrounded by low hills, viewed here by Malloch with his signature bold, colourful abstract style with a soft glow of light in the sky.
If there’s an overall theme in this exhibition, it’s about deconstructing realism of the natural world to express the pared down purity of shape, colour and light with imaginative, atmospheric vision. The Aizle Collective of artists complement each other with their own luminous, languid, dark and dramatic reflections on the passing of time within the peaceful permanence of place.
Aizle Artist Collective – Debut Exhibition,
Dundas Street Gallery, 6A Dundas Street, Edinburgh EH3 6HZ
Thursday 24 – Tuesday 29 June, 2021.
Open daily: 11am – 8pm. Tuesday 29 June: 11am to 4pm.
N.B. Do visit the Dundas Street Gallery to see this enticing showcase of affordable art with prices ranging from £55 to £480, as well as racks of other original paintings (unframed)
(Unfortunately there are no images available to illustrate the work of Catherine Barnes)
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