We were recently up in Scotland for a busy few days of exhibition openings from some of the artists we have the pleasure of working with. Between Edinburgh's New Town and the East Lothian shore, three shows – two shaped by the sea, one by a hillside garden – brought together new work by Angie Lewin, Mark Hearld, Brita Granström and Mick Manning, alongside artists whose work we were glad to discover or revisit.
Over the Waves – Waterston House, Aberlady
Our first stop was Waterston House in Aberlady, home of the Scottish Ornithologists' Club, for Over the Waves. Through print, painting, collage and sculpture, the exhibition considers the journeys made each year by the birds that migrate to and from British shores.
Mark Hearld's new collages take their cue from the shoreline and the birdlife gathered along it. Geese crowd together on the salt marsh, and waders and seabirds are caught mid-movement, with the sense of life that runs through all his work.
Jonathan Gibbs layers collagraph, woodcut and collage onto wood panels, using seaweeds, rushes and grasses gathered on his native East Norfolk coast. Alongside these sit images of little terns, which nest along that coast before their long migration to Africa in late summer, while a series of small wood engravings turns to other seasonal visitors – swifts, swallows, the cuckoo and the nightingale.
Kittie Jones works outdoors wherever possible, drawing seabirds from life beside the colonies of Scotland's east coast and the Isle of May. These studies become drawings in charcoal, pastel and pencil, often on collaged papers, alongside small-edition screenprints made by hand at Edinburgh Printmakers.
Seth Draper's automata and sculptures, made from driftwood, recycled tins and other material found along the shore, bring movement into the gallery. Drawing on the migrants that visit the coastlines of East Anglia and Wales, his small mechanical birds – barnacle and pink-footed geese, and puffins in flight – combine weathered timber and metal.
Clockwise from top left: Mark Hearld, Kittie Jones, Seth Draper and Jonathan Gibbs
Full Fathom Five – Open Eye Gallery, Edinburgh
Back in Edinburgh, at the Open Eye Gallery on Abercromby Place, Brita Granström, Mick Manning and Alex Malcolmson are exhibiting together for the first time, having each shown there individually for many years. Full Fathom Five brings together paintings, constructions and carvings drawn from the artists' own experiences of living beside the sea, in all its moods.
Brita's paintings move between wild, all-weather landscapes made near her seaside home and quieter interiors: still lifes of tulips, shells and teapots, and tender domestic moments that recall the Intimist painting of Vuillard and Bonnard. Titles such as Shipwreck and Black Tulips and Seal Song and Cow Parsley suggest how readily sea and home meet in her work.
Mick, who divides his time between Sweden and the Scottish Borders with his partner Brita, paints the wildlife he encounters on walks and fishing trips – gannets on the Bass Rock, puffins on Iona, ravens in Shetland. After many years as an illustrator, including most of the 1990s spent running the illustration course at The Glasgow School of Art, he now concentrates on painting, and the new work extends to otters, divers and little auks. His painting Full Fathom Five shares its title with the exhibition.
Shetland-born Alex Malcolmson completes the trio with box constructions, paintings and carved birds. A piece often begins with something found – timber washed ashore, a rusty washer, an old sea chart – while his carved divers, terns and oystercatchers draw on a long tradition of folk art.
Clockwise from top: Mick Manning, Alex Malcolmson and Brita Granström
Cultivated Colour – The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh
Our final opening was Cultivated Colour, Angie Lewin's exhibition of more than fifty new watercolours at The Scottish Gallery on Dundas Street. We wrote about the paintings in more detail here, but seeing them hung together offered a more rounded sense of the seasons they trace – from the earliest snowdrop to late-summer agapanthus and the dahlias of early autumn, grown in her hillside garden and set among ceramics and decorative papers.
Alongside the cultivated flowers are native wildflowers – vetch, orchids and plantain from the wilder parts of the garden and the riverbank beyond – and a distinct group of pelargoniums, grown inside the artist's home and studio on Speyside. Vintage textiles and the covers of old books also find a place in the compositions. The exhibition continues a long relationship with The Scottish Gallery, whose director, Christina Jansen, has followed Angie's watercolour practice for sixteen years.
Explore our collection of cards and paper goods by:
Angie Lewin | Mark Hearld | Brita Granström | Mick Manning
Exhibition details
Over the Waves – Mark Hearld, Jonathan Gibbs, Kittie Jones and Seth Draper
26 September – 15 November 2026 | Waterston House, Aberlady, East Lothian EH32 0PY | Tuesday to Sunday 10am–4.30pm | Website
Full Fathom Five – Brita Granström, Mick Manning and Alex Malcolmson
25 September – 17 October 2026 | Open Eye Gallery, 34 Abercromby Place, Edinburgh EH3 6QE | Tuesday to Friday 11am–5pm, Saturday 11am–2pm | Website
Cultivated Colour – Angie Lewin
1–24 October 2026 | The Scottish Gallery, 16 Dundas Street, Edinburgh EH3 6HZ | Tuesday to Friday 10.30am–6pm, Saturday 11am–2pm | Website
