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Art at the Edge

Artists and archaeologists on Arran have been exchanging information and ideas on the Island’s distant past. This has seen creative responses such as this exhibition, stimulated ongoing enquiry and has created new opportunities for future events. The focus has been the Neolithic landscape of Drumadoon, a rewilding estate on the West coast of the Island, connecting people to the land and sea.  

The title of the exhibition ‘Art at the Edge’ suggests a link to our location on the western seaboard that has historically and pre-historically been a place of discovery, trade, community and change. 

The work on show reveals the diversity of artistic practice in both two and three dimensions, including drawing, painting, ceramics, wood and more. 

You can view the exhibition both online here and in person at the Lochranza Country Inn – open daily, shown inside the dining room.  Please ask at the bar for access.

And How We Focus With Lunar Moments – Gavin Macgregor

Pastel, graphite, found page of book from Carnac, on packaging card.

325 x 400mm

heritagelandscapecreativity | Exploring Time Travel of Place

Email: g.macgregor@archaeologyscotland.org.uk

And How We Move With Solar Rhythms – Gavin Macgregor

Pastel and graphite, on packaging card.

325 x 400mm

heritagelandscapecreativity | Exploring Time Travel of Place

Email: g.macgregor@archaeologyscotland.org.uk

These pieces are a response to exploring megalithic monuments in the Gulf of Morbihan, Brittany, in 2025.  The enduring presence in the landscape of such prehistoric monuments can also be seen on Isle of Arran and reveals how wider communities were connected along the Atlantic seaboard 6,000 years ago.  These landscapes faced significant changes millennia ago due to sea level rises, I am interested if and how an understanding of these deep time stories can play a role for people today in response to the climate and biodiversity crises.  

Landfall – Tim Saville

Acrylic and wood on board

850 x 340 mm

Email: huntersavillecumbraegallery@gmail.com 

‘Mission-encounters-discovery-acceptance-adaptation’ 

The need for voyages of the mind for enlightenment, knowledge and even survival. 

Every brush mark is a nervous step towards the edge of the unknown. 

Traces – Tim Saville

Acrylic and wood on board

850 x 340 mm

Email: huntersavillecumbraegallery@gmail.com 

Licht – Jane Greenstreet

Charcoal

640 x 600 mm

Pale glimmers of filtered light 

Catching edges 

Caressing sandscapes 

Nestling in folds 

Its lambent glow 

Sending hope into the falling night. 

Hollow Hill – Ed O’Donnelly

Watercolour

700 x 700 mm

www.edodonnelly.co.uk 

From an idea that Island communities once felt they inhabited a landscape with a prehistory animated by mythologies and folklorlinked to ‘ancient’ monuments.  

What We Know To Be True – Julia Bovee

Straw, Linen and Wire

850 x 740 mm

Email: juliabovee@gmail.com

This piece is a study on historical migration. When people set out to leave their homes and travel across unknown lands and seas what knowledge and stories did they take with them. Much of that knowledge would have been nature based. The sun, moon and stars, winds, tides and seasons were all part of their daily lives and would have dictated the way they existed in the world, “What we know to be true”. 

The Gobhlach – Rob Stevens

Acrylic

1060 x 540 mm

Email: treborsnevets@hotmail.co.uk 

This painting was inspired by the singing burnside of Allt Gobhlach in Pirnmillor maybe, turned on its head, an ‘Arcimboldo’.

Iolach nan dream a dh’falbh leatha, Druim a dhùinn 2026  

A Whisper From The People Swept From the Land Drumadoon 2026 – Eoghann MacColl

Water based paint and oil bar on recycled plywood wood.

480 x 490 mm

Instagram: @eoghannmaccoll

The title is take from a line in the poem, cladhaidh, by Alistair Paul. 

‘S e obair gun do rinn mi ‘sa stiùideio agam. Ach tha cudromach oir thòisich mi leis dealbhan agam fhèin, dealbhan le peansail gun do tharraing mi aig an àite. Chòisich mi suas a chursas. 

(This work is fully referencing the cursus at Drumadoon. I walked sections drawing while moving, following the monument. The horizon references Kintyre across the Sound.) 

‘S ann às an t-àite a tha e air fad, sealladh thall linntean agus ginealachan ri teachd. 

Facets – Ed O’Donnelly

Watercolour

955 x 955 mm

www.edodonnelly.co.uk 

From a series of paintings titled ‘lithic’ exploring compositional ideas and painting processes responding to the geological form and functional use of flint, pitchstone and obsidian in prehistory.

Natural Geometrics – Rob Stevens

Acrylic

950 x 950 mm

Email: treborsnevets@hotmail.co.uk

Bleached Bones and Nature’s Geometry, 

Clinker built and Grid Iron, 

A Collection Cast in Poise and Balance

Ancient Landscape – Ann Hume

Acrylics and mixed media

330 x 330 mm

www.annhumejewlery.co.uk 

This painting is a spontaneous abstract response to the landscape at Drumadoon Cursus. I wanted to create a sense of movement with playful marks whilst representing the partial decomposition of vegetation beneath the surface of the bog and the suggestion of the stoney surface of the cursus in the foreground. 

Interior With Two Cups Looking Towards West – Josephine Broekhuizen

Oil

390 x 330 mm

www.josephinebroekhuizen.com

This painting is to do with interiors and exteriors and the feelings that these things give you. The tilted perspective of the table top brings you into the room. The wooden surface and the cloth ground you in the interior. While colours from the interior pick up on the lyrical distant landscape and draw your eye outside again.

From Light, Earth and Air – Ruth Mae

Vessel turned in holly, placed on a section of bog oak. Timbers sourced on Arran. 

Holly vessel is textured and “ebonised” to a slate/grey. Gilded with 23.75ct gold leaf (please don’t touch) 

70mm hight x 8mm diameter. 

Email: ruthmae.nagare@gmail.com 

Strata – Morgan Russell

Herculite Plaster  

220 x 120mm 

Email: nagromcom@yahoo.co.uk 

Strata investigates how a single line when altered, repeated and layered can develop into an intricate 3D dimensional form. The sculpture exhibited here is a cast copy of the original work which is composed of over a thousand individually cut leafs of paper. Through its process of creation Strata quietly nods to the slow repetitive development of an old tree’s rings or the gradual erosion of stratified geological features, both natural processes that expand far beyond the human life span. 

Aefintyr – Rob Stevens

Raku Ceramic. 

500w x 320h mm 

Email: treborsnevets@hotmail.co.uk 

The hull is press moulded from a Willow Basket mould and the Ceramic  Birds…relate in spiritual terms to the understanding that seagulls were known for their ability to navigate between the sea and the sky, which has led many to view them as messengers between different realms. 

‘Aefintyr’ is an old Norse word that means “to venture” implying a strong element of risk and the excitement of facing the unknown and unpredictable. 

 

Seaweed – Kirsteen Holuj

250 x 250mm approx 

www.kirsteenholuj.co.uk 

Sagger fired ceramics coloured using oxides, minerals and Arran found botanicals (pine needles, seaweed and peat). Copper lid with twig and dried seaweed.

Earth Disc – Rob Stevens

Monoprint

740 x 740 mm

To see a World in a Grain of Sand 

     And Heaven in a Wild Flower, 

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand 

           And Eternity in an hour. 

                   William Blake 

Square Cross II 2018 – Tim Pomeroy

Reeds, Wood, Plaster, Gold Leaf on Paper

820 x 820 mm

www.timpomeroy.com 

Cois na Mara – Eoghann MacColl

Pencil Drawing

420 x 420 mm

Instagram: @eoghannmaccoll 

Rinn mi dealbh air traigh an Dubh-abhainn ann an t-Iuchair 2024. ‘S e turas tron arainneachd Àrainn a th’ ann, an cois na mara, mar a chìad cheum, gu chuirsus agus sealladhean nam beanntan. 

This is a detail of a drawing made in July 2024, started on the beach at Drumadoon, Blackwaterfoot. It mirrors first foot fall, visits the cursus and views of the mountains beyond.  

Flora of the Bog – Ann Hume

Acrylic and Mixed Media on canvas

340 x 340 mm

www.annhumejewlery.co.uk

This painting represents the unique flora of Peat bogs, in this particular depiction, sphagnum moss and bog cotton.  

Over time, the plants form peat and act as a front line in the fight against climate change, trapping carbon in the bog. 

The lack of oxygen and the acidic environment, allows the ability of peatlands to preserve things for thousands of years, making the bog into an archaeological archive. 

Drumadoon – Isobel Milne

Mixed Media, Paint, Crayon, Charcoal, Print

400 x 400 mm

www.isobelmilne.co.uk 

This piece of work evolved from visits to Drumadoon and the cursus monument. I have printed from my own work, and absorbed images of Neolithic chippings from Arran.