The Fine Art Society in Edinburgh presents an exhibition of Scottish landscape paintings by Victoria Orr Ewing (b.1962). Her pictures depict remote crofts and unsullied vistas of Galloway, the Highlands and the west coast of Scotland all dwarfed by churning, luminescent skies.

Galloway-raised Orr Ewing lived and painted in Andalucia for sixteen years, drawn to its wild landscapes and changing light. On her return to Britain this emphasis remained in her art, emboldened by the dark, complex hues of Scotland’s weather.

Orr Ewing paints primarily in oil on large-scale canvas, mostly from sketches done in front of the subject and often finished from memory. She joins a long tradition of Scottish landscape painters that began with Alexander Nasmyth in the late 18th century. By capturing nature’s overwhelming power and Scotland’s underpopulated landscape, Orr Ewing uses the scale of her pictures to envelope the viewer.

I would like my work to express our vulnerability in the face of the vastness of nature, to feel small and yet be a part of it. I also intend it to be about hope, the melancholy of place and hope in the future. The sunlight in the distance or breaking through the clouds. A remote house against the large sky, a road or fence suggests to me our ephemeral nature and fragility.