A Visit to the Dovecot Studios

This summer didn't turn out as expected in any way. It has been a very sad time and that was also reflected in the weather. Apparently it has been the coldest summer here in Scotland since records began (whenever that was!). Certainly that's true for the period we have lived here. At the start back in June I made a list of everything I wanted to do over the summer months. Of all those activities just the ones with deadlines set in stone have been met but only one other thing has thus far been crossed off and that is the Escher exhibition to which I took my mother. Things couldn't continue like this and I decided to just get on with it. So glad I did as the two exhibitions I visited today were very much worthwhile.

They were both in the same venue (Dovecot Studios) and complimented each other beautifully. Both artists concentrated on working with abstract colour and texture. The first four pictures show the work of Kwang Young Chun, a  Korean artist. This is his first solo exhibition in Scotland (called Aggregations) and is harking back to ancient traditions with his triangular forms wrapped in Korean mulberry paper and tied with hand-twisted paper string.

 Part of the interest is that amazing script that in itself adds texture to his work. I loved the details.

Then I moved on to Bernat Klein's A Life in Colour show. I love this artist's work and have seen it before, specially his painting. This is a retrospective (he died last year) showing both textiles and paintings. Originally from Yugoslavia as it was called then, he spend most of his life in the Scottish Borders from where he provided luxury textiles to fashion houses all over Europe. All the pictures beneath are from his work.

 I love the extremely textural way he applies his paint.

Very often he used one of his own fabrics as a background for painting on such as the above parrot tulip painting.

His use of colour lifts the spirits and there are gems to be discovered in the details as well as in the overall pictures. Looking at the photographs I took you can see that's the details that attracted me most.

 It was very pleasant that photography was allowed as it would be hard to realize just how much texture his work has without getting so visually close.

It was also wonderful to see just how many of his works had red stickers on them. Had I the money I would have indulged too!

I had been planning to visit another show in Edinburgh but it was amazingly busy. In fact if you had lifted your feet the crowd would probably have carried you along so I decided to save that visit till the Edinburgh Festival is over. The Dovecot is one of the Festival's many venues. These two shows are still on till the 26th September and are entirely free. However I never escape from their shop without something and today it was a package of sunography squares to do sun printing with.  Will there still be a chance to do this before this summer is over, I wonder?