Marie Barbour

Scottish artist Marie Barbour is a graduate from the Glasgow School of Art and is a regular exhibitor at Compass Gallery, included in touring exhibitions such as "21st Century Women".

"I work from my studio in Glasgow’s East End. In the last year I have become increasingly interested in working in the medium of watercolour.

I have recently toured many of the Scottish islands, including the Hebrides and Orkney. This has inspired me to start producing more landscape paintings. I have become interested in working on a larger scale, and I enjoy the opportunity it gives me to explore the experimental qualities of the medium. I love the intensity of colour it can provide, whether this is through the transparency and opacity of different colours, or the granulating quality of colours such as ultramarine.

I have also turned increasingly to watercolour when exploring other themes from nature. I continue to paint flowers from my garden, and from gardens that I visit, as well as flowers in the wild. The medium gives me the freedom to take a looser approach to my subject while embracing the brilliance of colour and luminosity it provides. I am excited by the unpredictable nature of the medium: the way colours bleed in to each other, run, seep, and blot.

I intend to do more travelling this year and look forward to spending time in my studio where I can explore further the qualities of watercolour through my work."