February Exhibition: Olivia Irvine - Improvised Fictions

I like to paint from my imagination, seeing what the process reveals. Familiar images populate enclosed environments that hint of rooms and gardens. They surface from the abstract paint marks and create invented worlds. Some are altered memories, some arise from intense observation; others develop as a game of risk-taking where
each move is tied up with the formal qualities of painting. They look like narratives, but are improvised fictions.

Many of the paintings are created on top of old paintings, recycling earlier gestures. I use a variety of techniques, such as layering, scraping back and line to create complexity. This process helps me keep any image from becoming too fixed until it reveals itself and surprises me. Colour is important to me. I work mainly in oil, but sometimes use acrylic and egg tempera. I have recently been working in fresco (pigment on lime plaster) and have included a few frescoed found objects in this exhibition, tying into the recycling theme.

I studied drawing and painting at Edinburgh College of Art, spent a year in Madrid on a Spanish Government Scholarship and gained my Masters from Winchester School of Art in Barcelona. Since then, I have been working from my studio in Edinburgh, exhibited in many group and solo shows and partaken in several artist residencies.

In 2021, I was awarded a Creative Scotland Sustaining Creative Development Grant.

In 2022, I won the W Gordon Smith and Jay Gordonsmith Award at the RSA annual exhibition, a Stephen Palmer Travel Bursary, and a Queen Elizabeth Scholarship to do more training in fresco. I am a Teaching Fellow at the University of Edinburgh Short Courses.

Main Event Image: Olivia Irvine - Rug Travel

Image: Olivia Irvine - Orcadian Holiday

Host or Publisher The Scottish Arts Club