Lorna Mackay

Lorna is a landscape painter based in central Scotland. Her paintings are loosely representational and communicate the beauty and energy that being in a natural space can evoke.

Being outdoors and travelling is an essential part of her inspiration and Lorna uses her sketchbook to record her observations of the landscape, lochs, and coastlines that she experiences. It is this sketchbook work, alongside the memory of the place and the process of using the materials, that inspires her. Lorna is always looking for new ways to define a particular location and communicate the beauty and energy she finds there. She repeatedly draws and paints the same scene and looks to capture how the different elements: trees, water, and sky, can alter depending on time, her perspective, or weather.

Lorna works mainly with acrylic paint and inks. The fluidity of the materials are used to build a sense of chance as a foundation to build on, allowing for a freer interpretation of a particular place to evolve. As the painting progresses the sketchbook is no longer referenced but the memory of the place and feeling it evoked is of the most value. It is the cool greens and blues of the countryside that she is drawn to but increasingly vibrant shots of colour add further energy and also a sense of the impact of a human presence which is often excluded. This is beginning to take the form of harder edges in her painting along with lines that represent the routes we take through the landscape either with our eyes or feet. This impact is neither negative nor positive but a record.

Follow Lorna on Instagram @mackay_art.