Iona Leishman

Iona paints outside where she finds her authentic response to the surrounding landscape. Often her paintings are not grand vistas, but the close and immediate textures of bark and branch, of grass and roots. Close observation can reveal worlds within worlds. After the changing light and temperatures of painting outside, Iona loves the contrast of working back inside at a still life painting, appreciating that the objects stay constant! Her enjoyment of graphic design goes into full swing when she’s facing a Clarice Cliff teapot or an ornate dish of fruit and I paint my energy into these inanimate objects.

When Iona paint’s, she builds up textures with oil, pastel, ink and sometimes collage, varying the size of board she works on so that her eye does not become complacent. Iona varies her subject matter so that she challenges what she thinks she knows.

This marvellous, elusive act of creating a painting seems to be about questioning what she thinks she knows and understands and finding a new language with which to speak to others.

Iona is an elected member of the Glasgow Art Club (www.glasgowartclub.co.uk) and also of The Glasgow Society of Women Artists (www.gswa.org.uk)

FRAMING – I have my paintings framed locally by Phil Pieri at Rosslyn Cottage Framers in Bridge of Allan