Christine McArthur responds intuitively to the world around her, subjects revealing themselves to her, ideas formed by experience, gestated by the subconscious and by trial and error. The garden is fertile ground, a place entirely constructed but relying on the chaos of natural processes, a place of contemplation and stimulation which might be a starting point for McArthur’s imagination – a detail, a proportion, a blaze of colour. Working across all media, Borrowed Gardens reveals work made from visits to Le Vieux Logis, The Christian Dior Garden, Storrier Stearns Japanese Garden, Mayfield Farm, Le Bugue, The Charleston Garden and Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons. We are grateful to Christine for her following words, giving us more insight into her beautiful, original work.
The Scottish Gallery
The ‘Borrowed Gardens’ in this exhibition are borrowed in every sense. I have used them as starting points for my own imagination. I visit many gardens. I draw if it’s quiet and take photographs if it’s not.
In Andrew Patrick’s garden in Morocco, probably the most beautiful and the most drawable, it was too hot to do anything. Yves Saint Laurent’s garden in Morocco was too full of tourists.
When I went to see Christian Dior’s garden in Normandy, which I had looked forward to for years, it was a grey day and the main impression was of roses. I was very tired after the ferry journey and with trying to find the garden, so I was mainly thinking about going to the cafe for a cup of coffee. I felt sad there, as though I had intruded upon a place precious to this most private of men.
Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons has the most spectacular vegetable garden I have ever seen in my life. I would have loved to have spent a month drawing there but who could afford that?
So what I am trying to say is each garden became about something different… and I didn’t know what until I got there or until I had left it behind.
I have the same interest in a plot of potatoes growing in an allotment with
a broken-down seat at the side for the gardener as an impressive formal flower border or a group of beehives in a field or an unexpected find of red fungi hiding near a tree. Sometimes it’s an ink drawing using walnut ink to respect nature, sometimes an impression of colour and texture which becomes an embroidery or collage... the wicker chair and misty early autumn garden full of fallen quince in Le Vieux Logis, Trémolat, had to be a most gentle painting and as for Thomas Maxwell’s vast array of beautiful flowers, flowers, flowers chosen by him with an instinct and speed that took me aback, and so many of them that I had to go out to buy more vases. I stared and stared for days too overwhelmed to do anything - and then the Summer Garden in Five Vases came about.
The watercolours were painted in organic paints made in Belgium from plants - going through a ‘lengthy adventure’ before they are produced. The quite grainy and unpredictable colours themselves led the paintings.
Alliums and red chairs that were in the Charleston Garden.
My sister’s garden in the middle of nowhere and tended by my nephew, Fraser, is the inspiration for A Golden Seat in a Windswept Garden, A Bird Table in an Autumn Garden and The Lost Capercaillie.
The Japanese gardens are slightly separate in that this is an ongoing fascination.
It is the sense of design and quiet that I tried to remember and use.
I started with the lino cuts as a way to simplify my thoughts. I was taught lino printing by Willie Rodger and the lessons I learned from him have been applied to everything since.
Next came the small collages (ongoing ‘glimpsing’ series) and then I spent a year making the zen garden embroideries. As I began each one, I didn’t have a clue as to what I was going to do. I just sewed and let them grow naturally and instinctively bringing in details of what I had seen and felt as I went along. Not at all like the careful planning of the real thing. Some elements of the 12th century herbalist, Saint Hildegarde, are in there too. She had been an early thought in all this, and I didn’t want her to disappear.
I particularly love the Storrier Stearns Garden designed by Kinzuchi Fujii. I have visited it a few times and it is the touching story behind this masterpiece that draws me to it.
Christine McArthur, 2023
Yohaku-No-Bi (The Beauty of Blank Space)
embroidery on linen, 60 x 71 cm
Tsukiyama Paths (Moon Mountain Paths)
embroidery on linen, 64 x 66.5 cm
Niwaki (Garden Tree)
embroidery on linen, 56 x 62 cm
embroidery
4
Kingyo (Goldfish)
5 Kurotsuki (Black Moon)
embroidery on linen, 28 x 33 cm
Kurai (Dark Night)
embroidery on linen, 28 x 33 cm
Uzamake (Spiral)
embroidery on linen, 36 x 68 cm
Karesansui (Raked Dry Gardens)
embroidery on linen, 39 x 68 cm
A Summer Garden in Five Vases mixed media on board, 102 x 102 cm
Garden Anemones Rainily mixed media on conservation board, 23 x 23 cm
Georgian Butterflies
15 Beautiful Beans mixed media on panel, 41.5 x 59 cm
Waterfall mixed media on conservation board, 16 x 19.5 cm
The Pond mixed media on conservation board, 16 x 19.5 cm
A Carved Rock
mixed media on conservation board, 16 x 19.5 cm
Blue Trees mixed media on conservation board, 16 x 19.5 cm
Sunflowers, Trees Behind watercolour on paper, 9 x 9 cm
Sunflowers I
watercolour on paper, 9 x 9 cm
Sunflowers Study II
gouache on cold press watercolour paper, 31 x 41 cm
Greenhouse Chrysanthemums
watercolour on paper, 20.5 x 15 cm
The Lost Capercaillie
watercolour on paper, 20.5 x 15 cm
A Golden Seat in a Windswept Garden watercolour on paper, 20.5 x 15 cm
A Bird Table in an Autumn Garden watercolour on paper, 20.5 x 15 cm
Christian Dior, Yellow Roses
watercolour on paper, 18 x 19.5 cm
36
Dark Shadow Stones
linocut, edition of 7, 10.3 x 10.3 cm
40 Borrowed Gardens I
group of 4, walnut ink drawings, 14.5 x 14.5 cm each
Borrowed Gardens II
group of 4, walnut ink drawings, 14.5 x 14.5 cm each
Christine McArthur (b.1953)
Christine McArthur trained at Glasgow School of Art from 1971-76 under David Donaldson, James Robertson and Leon Morrocco. She taught at both Glasgow University and the Glasgow School of Art up until 1980, when she began painting full time. She was elected to the RGI and the RSW. McArthur inhabits an immersive, creative world and tends to work in a series of ‘diaries’ from which finished work emerges. The passing seasons are observed intertwined with her own imagery from her surroundings and familiar objects. She is a mixed media artist who specialises in oil, oil pastel, embroidery, acrylic, watercolour, pen and ink and collage. She exhibits in Scotland, London and internationally.
Published by The Scottish Gallery to coincide with the exhibition
Christine McArthur BORROWED GARDENS4 - 27 May 2023
Exhibition can be viewed online at: scottish-gallery.co.uk/borrowed-gardens
ISBN: 978-1-912900-63-3
Designed and Produced by The Scottish Gallery
Photography: John McKenzie, Christine McArthur and The Scottish Gallery
Details from Christine McArthur's studio, p62 & inside back cover
All rights reserved. No part of this catalogue may be reproduced in any form by print, photocopy or by any other means, without the permission of the copyright holders and of the publishers.
