Posts for September, 2025

The Spey Bank Studio is taking part in North East Open Studios for a second year.

This long-running event involves 300 artists opening up their studios to the public for 10 days. That means you can delve into their practice, see their materials and where they spend their days producing amazing artwork.

The event runs from September 13-21, with each artist keeping different opening hours – check the wee yellow book (available from us!) or check the website entries.

This year, as well as Angus’s work, we will be hosting a young local glass artist, Brodie Birss, AKA Brodie B Designs.

Brodie is a graduate of Gray’s School of Art, where she studied 3D design and specialised in glass and metal. She went onto attend Bishopsland Educational Trust, which provides postgraduate education in silversmithing. Since returning to Scotland, Brodie has continued to develop her glass and silver practice.

Her work is inspired by nature, process and material. She believes that that working with our hands and immersing ourselves in nature is essential to mental and physical wellbeing.

Join us for the start of our summer exhibition. Angus Grant and Campbell Bryson are teaming up for Sunshine & Shadows, a reprise of their first show 14 years ago.
Both men are landscape painters with distinctive styles. Bryson’s work is renowned for its treatment of light and shadow, creating almost mosaic-like patterns. Grant’s work features the familiar landscapes of the Cairngorms, especially the lochs and mountains.

Join us at OpenSpace in Grantown on Spey to celebrate the local artists and creatives in the National Park – sparking conversation, connecting landscape and community and inspiring collective action.

Arboreal By Liz Green explores the iconic Highland woodland types made by Pine, Birch and Oak trees as well as plantations. These paintings are a feast of colour, pattern, texture, season and botanical identity distilled to depict the character and atmosphere of uniquely different woodland places.
‘I hope these paintings immerse the viewer in arboreal realms that I have found to be awe-inspiring, grounding and uplifting. Knowing trees can span several human generations and support an intricate wealth of other life is endlessly fascinating at every scale of observation’.
Liz Green is a self-taught artist based at WASPs Inverness Creative Academy and living in Inverness since 2003. Working in both oils and acrylic, her paintings include a mixture of realistic detail and stylised abstraction at differing scales. Her previous life strongly informs her art. With a degree in Botany and career as a plant ecologist, then environmental campaigner Liz has a deep understanding of ecosystems, the value and jeopardy of habitats and the complexity of trying to influence policy. Doing garden design work to suit places and people, then working in schools embedded her interest in visual communication. It was worsening arthritis that propelled her to start painting more in 2010 and she has not looked back.

The book launch of ‘Off-Piste Performance’ by Alison Thacker will be the first opportunity to see this exciting and insightful book in print, with signed copies available and the enjoyment of a social evening to chat with Alison and likeminded skiers to get excited about the season ahead!

The Mountains are Calling is our new summer exhibition, taking inspiration from the rugged landscape of the Highlands and beyond.

Our specially selected artists will show their beautiful works of art, including photography, painting and printmaking, and reveal how they are inspired by those imposing peaks.

Artists include Kitty Watt, Shona Cammack, Campbell Bryson, Esther Tyson, Rona Kant, Myrddin Irwin, Georgia Murray and many more.

This collection is representative of Joanna Wilson’s early interest in the metaphysical power of art. The healing properties of crystals, the inner wisdom of oracle cards and the outward sense that a greater power
is at work — all of these inform her attempts to connect her own creativity with Creation itself. Her hope is that the unique intentions with which each piece is created transfers to its viewer or owner.

Come and meet Van Coo: the curly-haired bull missing part of his ear, just like his namesake! In 2021 he wandered into the creative imagination of local artist Joanna Wilson. Here he was joined by other creatures of the Cairngorms before finding form in the expressive mixed media for which Wilson is best known.

An award-winning artist of international acclaim, Wilson grew up among these glens before work and study took her far and wide, from the Hayward Gallery to Yale University. Her abstract and figurative paintings can be found in private and public collections all over the world.

Coming home to set up her studio in Grantown-on-Spey reconnected Wilson with her Highland roots. This limited collection of prints represents a unique opportunity to own a lighthearted example of her work that celebrates this land and its inhabitants.

Not many people around here know about Joanna Wilson’s secret life as an international artist. And yet her hideaway studio on Heathfield Road is filled with thousands of art works: floor-to-ceiling abstracted figures that seem to leap from her fingertips and dance across her walls.

A Saatchi Featured Artist and the recipient of numerous awards, Joanna’s work appears in private and public collections throughout the world. But not until now has it received an exhibition space of its own right here in her hometown.

Encountering her work for the first time you will notice a lilting, musical quality to her handling of form, reminiscent of the glens where she grew up. But her compositions incorporate geometric and purely decorative elements too, which seem to reference the urban settings of Edinburgh and London, where she has also lived and worked as an artist.

A full-circle moment for Joanna, this very room is where she met with the Bank Manager to open her business account some 18 years ago. Now with a flourishing business of her own, she has created O P E N S P A C E to share her platform with other contemporary artists searching for a safe space to showcase their own groundbreaking work.

Thoughtful and expressive, modest and exuberant — to know Joanna’s art is to know the artist herself, which is why her work so universally approachable and collectible.

Meet Van Coo: the curly-haired bull missing part of his ear, just like his namesake! In 2021 he wandered into the creative imagination of local artist Joanna Wilson. Here he was joined by other creatures of the Cairngorms before finding form in the expressive mixed media for which Joanna is best known.

An award-winning artist of international acclaim, Joanna grew up among these glens before work and study took her far and wide, from the Hayward Gallery and the Albert Hall to Yale University. Coming home to set up her studio in Grantown-on-Spey reconnected her with her Highland roots. This limited edition of originals and prints represents a unique opportunity to own a lighthearted example of her work that celebrates this land and its inhabitants.

A solo exhibition of Joanna’s abstract figurative work can be found in the O P E N S P A C E gallery.