ABOUT THE ARTIST
BIOGRAPHY
ARTIST
Siobhan McLaughlin (b.1994) is an artist and curator based in Glasgow. She graduated with First Class MA (Hons) in Fine Art at Edinburgh University in 2019 and has since been awarded the SSA Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Award at the Royal Scottish Academy and a film commission from the Tate’s British Art Network. In 2022/23, Siobhan was awarded an RSA Residencies for Scotland at Cromarty Arts Trust, the Black Isle, a Visual Art Scotland Cornwall Exchange Residency and a Stephen Palmer Travel Award.
CURATOR
As well as exhibiting regularly, she has curated a major private collections exhibition at Dovecot Studios for the centenary of Scottish artist Alan Davie. Alan Davie: Beginning of a far-off World was held at Dovecot Studios, Edinburgh 24th June - 24th September 2022. In July 2023, her project Scottish Landscapes: A New Generation opened at Dovecot Studios. Alongside exhibition tours and talks, she produced an engagement programme for the duration of the exhibition including workshops with WHALE Arts, The Ripple Project and SCORE Scotland.
ARTIST STATEMENT
My practice combines personal experiences of walking and nature with material experimentation to create non-traditional landscape paintings. Alongside painting I use drawing, basic weaving, printmaking and installation to explore themes of place, struggle, memory and sustainability. I've been sewing remnant materials to form the base of my paintings since 2016, and am continually fascinated by the interactions between paint and material.
Recent work has evolved from time in the Black Isle and SW Cornwall. I’m interested in the experience of walking in these places, the unfolding nature of edges and movement of land/sea. The cultural memory and identity of towns along the SW Coastal Path – the red pigment residue of the tin-mining industry or the labour of the immense structure of the Minack Theatre– has also influenced the work. The hidden struggle of chronic pain is woven into my paintings, thoughts on care, memory and resistance are embedded in paint that is made from ground earth. The gathered rocks and earth from landscapes I walk in are slowly ground to connect to an ancient form of paint-making and reflect on the ecology of art making. Remnant fabrics– an old fisherman’s smock, childhood bedroom curtains – are stitched together to create a base for painting, sewing the histories of these textiles into the landscape of the painting. Abstract layers of oil and earth pigment are painted over this patchwork, interacting unpredictably with different textiles, creating underlying rhythms and currents within the painted forms.
I’m interested in honesty in painting, allowing raw materials, thick brushmarks and exposed frayed edges to lay bare the construction of the painting. I think this links into my interest in the history of British landscape painting, the romanticisation and valuing of rural landscapes primarily for their aethetic value, which for centuries has led us to risk minimising the land's ecological worth. In the current, continued, state of climate crisis, it is more important than ever to re-evaluate our understanding of landscapes, to represent them in paint not only as areas of beauty but as valuable and complex resources to be protected.
SELECTED PROFILES
2025
Belongings, an essay by Martin Holeman, published by Caught by the River
2024
2023
Engage Scotland Interview, Stephen Palmer Award
2022
2020
Sotheybs Intitute Magazine Interview
2019
The List, Review of SSA | VAS Open 2019 .
Barns-Graham Trust, The SSA Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Award.
Degree Show, Edinburgh College of Art.
The Huntley MacDonald Sinclair Prize.
2018
2017
Scotland + Venice Professional Development Programme.
MEMBERSHIP