Rosa Steppanova

5 June, 2008

HOW does the offer of a free mini-break in Italy appeal to you? If that sounds too good to be true, let me tell you that Venice has come to Shetland.

In order to bask in all its glories, hasten along to Vaila Fine Art, where you’ll find the second Shetland show of the Glasgow Girls - Rosemary Beaton, Leslie Burr, and Alison Harper. Their exhibition Painting Venice is the result of a four day visit to this magical city over Easter 2007.

Initially Rosemary Beaton’s nudes bring to mind the unmitigated fleshy realism of Lucian Freud, but the figures in her paintings, rather than shackling them in “Freudian” mottled skin, she releases them into celebrations of the human form and life itself through her chromatic playfulness and exuberance.

In the life-size acrylic Gondolier’s Siesta a resting male figure in skimpy black-and-white striped bathing trunks takes up the foreground, while behind it, the lapping waters of the Laguna sing a lullaby, and the campanile of the Doge’s Palace watches from a distance. On closer inspection the torso of the sleeper expands into a superbly executed abstract in its own right (I overheard viewers enthuse about the right nipple, reminiscent of a pimento-stuffed green olive).

Her female nudes on the opposite wall are equally striking, but more intimate, more seductive and, being female, superbly voluptuous. Her punky red nude, draped casually in a grass-green Mackintosh, boldly places a Wellington-clad leg on a red chair, bang in the centre of “Europe’s Finest Drawing Room”. Rosemary’s paintings are finished in the studio, and that is just as well. Had they been executed in the Piazza di San Marco, they would have caused a scandal – in a city grown accustomed to scandal over many centuries.

She also shows a sextet of small, translucent, light as air, ink and watercolour drawings, all completed in situ.

On entering the first room of this exhibition you will be irresistibly drawn into wide expanses of Venetian waters. Leslie Burr’s Immersed in Blue, and Angel, are large oils that convey the full scale and grandeur of the city, captured from the lofty heights of the campanilo of San Giorgio Maggiore, with the town’s architectural splendours reaching out into the Adriatic Sea.

Lesley is a superb colourist, but this exhibition is a marked departure from the bold, high key pallet of her earlier landscapes. Her Venice paintings with their warm, soft colours capture the mystery and fragility of this crumbling, floating city in delicate detail. Birds, especially doves and pigeons, add symbolism, or touches of humour as in Dancing Birds.

There is a strong spiritual element in Dove of Hope, inspired by the omnipresence of water in Venice, and the biblical flood. Lesley has replaced Noah with a young woman. She leans out of a small, green-shuttered window to release a white bird from her hands. There is a feeling of deep serenity in this picture, quite unthreatened by the encroaching blue waves lapping the walls of the deep red-brown building. There’s an equal feeling of calm in the terracotta sky and the still reflections of her Palazzo.

Alison Harper is showing six small canvasses, and in each of them she opens a jewel box of beguiling, zingy colour. From the Creation, her only figurative work, was inspired by the ceiling paintings of the Basilica San Marco, and shows – in striking blue and gold - a chorus line of doe-eyed Byzantine angels, witnessing the birth of the sun and moon.

Her slant on Venice is strongly contemporary with vaporettas, the city’s equivalent of taxis, resting on green “Canaletto” ripples, below houses with balconies and shutters in bold primary colours. Her use of light is extraordinary. It brings an almost tangible Mediterranean heat to the sun-drenched facades of her buildings, and lends an Oriental glow to The Golden Dome, where an opulent cityscape rises like a mirage from a wine-dark sea.

The Basilica di San Marco benefits greatly from Alison’s style. She has liberated this building, accustomed to many centuries of architectural modification and addition, from its present day stasis. In her exuberant painting of the same name, it bubbles into growth once again, an almost organic, and chromatically explosive way.

Rosemary, Lesley and Alison first met as undergraduates at Glasgow School of Art in the early 1980s, and have been friends for 26 years. All three have children and therefore limited time to paint, which makes their output all the more impressive. Each one is an accomplished and recognised artist in her own right; but they have jointly exhibited from time to time since their first show as The Glasgow Girls at the Boundary Gallery, London in 1987.

Such collaborations are rather uncommon in the art world. Alison, elected spokeswoman of the trio, described painting as “a largely solitary pursuit” and referred to the Venice experience as a fruitful cross-fertilisation, greatly encouraging and energising for them all. Meeting the Glasgow Girls at the show’s opening was a privilege, as they are every inch as beautiful, complex, deep and vibrant as their paintings.

It’s a rare treat to come across a concentration of such formidable and highly individual talent under one roof. The exhibition is at once exhilarating and deeply moving, a reflection of the girls’ authenticity and integrity as artists and human beings, and a tribute to the strong bond of their friendship.

Gallery owners are rarely given any public credit, and Dorota Rychlik must be congratulated for bringing the Glasgow Girls back to Shetland for a second time; and applauded for her flair and panache in organising the Venice-themed opening to the show. Supremely kitschy gold-embroidered gondolas worn by the artists, floating flowers, and a never-ending flow of Italian delicacies supplied by “Posh Tarts” (in Alison’s experience far superior to nosh she’s shared with Prince Charles) gave the occasion a fizzy carnival atmosphere.

Painting Venice runs at Vaila Fine Art until 1 August. The gallery is open Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays from 11 am until 5 pm.