Coming home, oil, 2008
41 x 60 in, 112 x 153cm
Night Walk , oil, 2008		Day turns into night, oil, 2008
47 x 39in 120 x 100cm		39 x 39in 100 x 100cm
		The Fannichs , oil, 2008
		20 x 60in, 51 x 153cm

Price range: £1500.00 - 12000.00 (ex VAT)

WENDY SUTHERLAND

Sutherland’s Highlands begin with the great Jurassic hills in the hinterland of Brora where generations of her family have occupied the same granite croft back to the 1820s. Her widening range of new subjects now stretches as far north as the border with Caithness (View from Ben Griam Beg) and southwards to Glen Lyon near Loch Tay. In other new paintings her vision, still specific in its genesis, takes on a universal dimension where distance and proximity may fuse, creating a beguiling ambiguity (Blue Breeze and Night Walk). Is this water we see or sea mist? How close are we to its surface?

In different moods and seasons, at dawn or dusk, Sutherland has been pursuing her dialogue with the landscape which has shaped her: firstly, through her daily rambles with sketchbook and senses on full alert, afterwards in her studio where she orchestrates her oils after each encounter. At this stage she may work at breakneck speed in transferring her energy on to canvas, sometimes handling several subjects at once. ‘Each piece,’ she comments, ‘I treat as an individual with its own demands as to what medium it requires. Pieces will vary from graphite and oil to a combination of ink and shellac. I try to listen to the subject and allow it to lead me in the direction that best reflects the mood or atmosphere’.

‘The progression of a painter’s work, as it travels in time from point to point,’ Mark Rothko has observed, ‘will be toward clarity; toward the elimination of all obstacles between the painter and the idea, and between the idea and the observer.’ For Sutherland the landscape she paints and her presence within it seem to merge progressively into a single consciousness with the result that we, the viewer, have a sense of being hypnotically drawn into it, towards that bright point of light on the horizon. The pattern of colour and texture marking out this route, moving into darkness and then light again beyond, has about it a musical resonance that is no accident. Sutherland cherishes a prescient aside by the Harvard philosopher George Santayana when he predicted that ‘an art may be coming which should deal with colours as music does with sound.’

Concerns such as these suggest an element of high seriousness underpinning all Sutherland’s works. Balancing this, though, is a disarming exuberance and spontaneity which can find expression in surprising ways. ‘There are times at night,’ the artist relates, ‘when we put on head torches and set out for the beach! There is a luminosity in the water I want to catch, just as breathtaking as on any bright, crisp morning.’

Biography

Wendy Sutherland was born in Brora, east Sutherland in 1975.  In 1997 she graduated from Edinburgh College of Art with First Class Honours, becoming a Master of Fine Arts two years later.  Since 1998 she has held six one-person exhibitions in the United Kingdom and Canada, including art.tm, Inverness (2000), Transit Gallery, Hamilton, Canada (2001), Artifex Gallery, Birmingham (2001), and Bonhoga Gallery, Shetland (2005).  Over this period she has also participated in some 35 group exhibitions, including Collective Gallery, Edinburgh (1997), Highlands and Islands Open (1998), Atkinson Gallery, Somerset (1998), McLellan Galleries, Royal Glasgow Institute of Fine Art (1999), Timespan, Helmsdale (2004) and Stenton Gallery, East Lothian (1999-2005).  Wendy Sutherland is the recipient of some ten art awards including Queens Anniversary (1995/96), Landscape Award, The Royal Scottish Academy (1998), Judges Commendation, Highland Open (1998), Awards to Artists, Highlands and Islands Arts and Scottish Arts Council (2001) and Convenor’s Prize, Highland Open (2004).  Since 1999 Sutherland has undertaken public commissions for four venues, including Edinburgh International Conference Centre (1999) and UHI Millennium Institute (2005).  Now based once more in the village in east Sutherland where she was born, Wendy Sutherland has for some time identified as her primary goal an evolving interpretation of the landscape of the Scottish Highlands through a range of media and in this chosen field is already considered a leading figure. In March 2008 the artist was profiled in the Landward programme on BBC Television Scotland. Exhibitions with Francis Kyle Gallery in 2007 and 2009.

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