EXHIBITION
Working Practice
This exhibition is a glimpse into Michelle Avison’s sustained practice in observational drawing.
Since 2001, Michelle has travelled to a Scottish island for one month of every year, equipped with sketchbooks, notepads, canvases, paper and board along with drawing, painting and printing materials including lino and etching plates. Sometimes she even takes a small press.
In a remote place full of sea and sky, Michelle spends days outside, in all weathers. As she scribbles, scratches, dabs, tears, cuts, washes, stretches and scrapes she never takes her eyes from the landscape around her. Her energy changes. No day is the same. It rains for hours. The midges bite. Monotypes, watercolours and charcoal drawings emerge. Over the weeks she feels her way into the essence of this place, revealed in a series of abstracted works that flow and collide against each other, a story of a relationship between artist, land and work.
Keep on exploring...
Collecting the Looking
“I love drawing really quickly. I love drawing in really difficult situations. I love drawing in the dark. I like what happens when you can’t see everything or when it’s passed and you have to remember it rather than drawing what it actually looks like, so it’s about the experience of looking as much as what I’m looking at.”
We talk to Michelle Avison about building a resilient artistic practice over 30 years.
Tide (Vertical) no.13
The Tide (Vertical) series of monotypes were made in the studio, responding to 100 watercolour paintings made in Scotland in the summer of 2021. They record changes to the sea, the tide and the weather. In their making, controlled accident and chance combine with painterly mark making to make new landscapes.
Rethinking Sketchbooks | 1 day | Saturday 8 November 2025
Rethink your sketchbook practice! This fun one-day course is designed to free you from the habit of seeing sketchbooks as just repositories for your drawing.
More Exhibitions
All exhibitions
Play of Shapes
An exhibition of collagraph relief monoprints, paintings and drawings exploring the expressive potential of abstracted forms derived from contemporary life, considered
in the light of Early Modernism.