Janise Yntema, a US-born artist with a love of the Scottish landscape, specialises in the technique of beeswax encaustic; a waxed-based painting method first used by the Greeks 3000 years ago.
The Greeks adorned battleships, statues and buildings with this combination of damar resin, beeswax and pigment.
Beeswax encaustic holds colour and, like oil painting, if an artist isn’t happy with what they have done, they can scrape back and work in layers over the top of a painting. Almost like the formation of a landscape.
At The Scottish Gallery in Edinburgh, Yntema presents a series of her atmospheric works.
Yntema, who is based in Brussels, has been visiting Scotland since 2000. These serene landscapes have been created following visits to Oban, Mull, Staffa, Fingal’s Cave, Fort William, Mallaig, Skye, Portree, Ullapool, Inverness, St Andrews, Perth and Edinburgh.
They are not place specific, but with titles such as Alternate Realms and As Day Begins, they create a mood of silent sublime airiness.
© SYSTEMYntema has injected a modern take by including photography; merging the digital with the ancient.
Yntema says: “My painting methods reflect the possibilities of layered histories: starting points, erasures and eradications through an accumulated language of restrained colour and line.
“My work has kept an awareness of nature close at hand. The more recent mixed media combination of painting and photography encompasses the tension between the traditional and technological.
“The process of making these images involves mixed media, with one technique obscuring another and the subject revealing itself at an enigmatic point.”
Janise Yntema: Where Sky Meets Earth is at The Scottish Gallery to Mar 25
The watercolours and sketches created in the trenches of the Western Front during the First World War by Poolewe-born artist Finlay Mackinnon (1863-1931) have gone on display for the first time at Gairloch Museum in Wester Ross.
Mackinnon captured the devastating scenes while serving with the 4th Seaforth Highlanders. Pauline Butler, who has worked behind the scenes to create the exhibition, will give a talk on the life and work of Mackinnon this Thursday at the gallery.
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