Emerging Exhibitions
St Andrews has a great many art galleries and museums to explore and appreciate throughout one’s time here. Currently there are many exhibitions on both in St Andrews and featuring its beautiful scenery. Not many artists, it seems, can resist the landscape of the East Neuk of Fife. I have here gathered an overview of the current and emerging exhibitions in our local art galleries, both online and in-person.
The Junor Gallery
Though recently converted to an online space, the Junor Gallery is no less active in the art world. One can view the latest exhibition, featuring the works of Alexander Moffat and Helen Bellany on their website, junorgallery.scot, now. Alexander Moffat is known for his work as a portraitist, but his works shown here are of another genre entirely, as they are beautiful renditions of Scottish and Italian landscapes. This being Bellany’s first exhibition, it is even more interesting to view how her landscape pieces interact with and blend with Moffat’s.
The Fraser Gallery
Coming up on its 160th birthday next year, the Fraser Gallery makes up one of Scotland’s oldest privately owned art galleries. They pride themselves on displaying contemporary Scottish artists and cultivating an intimate space for their visitors. The most recent exhibition to open is a collection of works by Robert MacMillan, which debuted as of September 11th and will be available to be viewed both online and in-person in their space on South Street in St Andrews. MacMillan’s works in this collection were all inspired by his trips to the East Neuk of Fife, and offer a brilliant depiction of what that landscape—one all St Andrews students are extremely familiar with—feels like to live in. MacMillan’s oil painting ‘A Clearing in the Storm, East Sands‘ is particularly illustrative of the charged atmosphere his works here display. The entirety of this collection impresses the colours and atmosphere of coastal Fife which will hit poignantly close to home for anyone who has fond memories of St Andrews and its surrounding areas.
The Sproson Gallery
Also located on South Street, the Sproson Gallery honors the Scottish summer landscape in its latest exhibition. Featuring the works of artists Linda Paton, Karen Wowk, and Mark Holden, this exhibition is entitled “Journeys of Light: Memories of a Scottish Summer.” Certainly, these works conjure a plethora of different light states we see everyday, month, and season in St Andrews and the surrounding towns and landscapes. Visitors will take special note of the clouds that many of Wowk’s works feature, as they convey the feel of these familiar landscapes—particularly the notorious wind—as well as the looks of them. This palpable atmoshphere is especially prolific in Wowk’s watercolour painting, ‘Reflections in the Harbour.’ The majesty of Scottish weather and landscapes is certainly not in danger of going un-captured in this exhibition at the Sproson Gallery.
Keep an eye on these spaces in the coming months as they change over their exhibitions. These galleries are all well worth a visit, either to quell your artistic appetites, inspire your artistic talents, or simply to remind you of the many beauties that surround us in and around St Andrews.