Image Not Available
Gregor Smith
, Scottish, 1944-2025
Title
Sound of JuraDate2024
MediumAquatint and etching on paper
Dimensions
Sheet: 39 × 57 cm
Credit LinePresented, with the support of Mr Peter Woods, 2025
Object numberNGI.2025.25
DescriptionGregor Smith was a Scottish painter and printmaker who lived and worked in Glasgow. He studied drawing and painting at Edinburgh College of Art from 1962 to 1966, and subsequently taught art in various schools in Central Scotland from 1968 to 2006. In 1983 he was elected a member of the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour.The focus of this powerful print is on the torrential rain clouds that move over the Sound of Jura - sea channel in Argyll and Bute, in the west of Scotland. The print forms part of the 2024 exhibition Between Islands, which ran at Graphic Studio Dublin and was in partnership with Glasgow Print Studio. Sound of Jura presents Smith’s visual observations of the Scottish coast, even though he only knew this landscape as an adult having been “raised among the steelworks, pits, mines, and farms of Lanarkshire.” He first sketched from a boat in order to experience the weather directly, and later translated his impressions into dramatic prints. He recalled that when at sea “a rapid response to the subject is best. Working outside has to be achievable, especially where high winds are not uncommon … Winter weather brings its own dramatic backcloth, precipitation and turbulence, vanishings.” This highly expressive black and white print evokes the stormy weather that Smith spoke about.
ProvenanceGraphic Studio Dublin; Purchased, with the support of Mr Peter Woods, 2025Exhibition HistoryBetween Two Islands, Graphic Studio Dublin, Dublin, 26 October 2024 - 30 November 2024