Spring Fling 2016, Dumfries and Galloway annual open artist and makers studios event, entered its 14th season with 94 participants across the region. Every year Spring Fling offers art lovers an opportunity to peek into the local artists’ creative practices, follows a progress from a simple sketch to the finished art piece and have a personal chat with them about what was involved in the process of creation.
As it is physically impossible to visit them all, I decided to reconnect with my last year favourites at Solway House.
I saw some new airy landscapes from Fraser Irvine and pastel sketches on display. His studio collection of cigarette packs is now longer!
Shona Guthrie who makes wearable jewellery allowed me to photograph the giant wall collage of photos, cutouts and quotes that forms her working environment. I had never seen a jeweller’s working equipment before!
I had a chat with Stephen Burney about the differences how a photographer and a landscape artist interpreted the same scene in front of them and about the idiosyncratic view angles. The series showing his sketches alongside the found objects from his landscape study trips was also revealing.
Finally I caught up with William Spurway and his newest prints, drawings and Dumfries and Galloway inspired oil landscape paintings, and got an invitation from him to the opening of his college students’ end of the year exhibition at Moat Brae.
I felt inspired to create new work too by this Spring Fling studios visit!
