Laura Drever

Teebro

New work by Laura Drever

Looking back on the 20th century it is clear that Orkney has been blessed with a good number of very fine landscape painters. Stanley Cursiter (1887-1976) first set out into the Orkney landscape in the early years of the century producing scenes of great poise and beauty that helped define how the islands were to be regarded. The Orkney writer Ernest W. Marwick (1915-1977), who took a keen interest in Cursiter’s work, stating, ‘perhaps his supreme achievement was to enable Orcadians to recognise with pride and gratitude the loveliness of the land they inherited’.¹  Ian MacInnes (1922-2003) picked up Cursiter’s mantle after WWII—shadowing many of his mentor’s favourite haunts including Yesnaby, Birsay, Rackwick and Stromness—painting with vigour and a keen sense of local colour. Later, a young Sylvia Wishart (1936-2008) would cast her eye over some of the same scenes creating work that is both vividly representational and full of emotive energy—reporting in a rare written statement that, ‘even during my years away from Orkney, I found that my paintings were invariably about Orkney.’ ²

Visiting artists, including Wilhelmina Barns-Graham (1912-2004), Bet Low (1924-2007) and Frances Walker (b. 1930), brought fresh perspectives to familiar places which framed the Orkney landscape in unexpected and exciting ways. Forty or more years on, Laura Drever steps out into these same landscapes. 

The modern Orkney landscape is characterised by the agricultural developments of the last 150 years or so, which saw a complete transformation in appearance from common grazing and piecemeal cultivation, to squared-off, drained and ordered fields. The higher up and more difficult to reach places, that proved impossible to put under the plough, endured, and most outlooks across the islands are capped by a contrasting layer of rough grass and heather. It is to these more rugged and untamed landscapes that Laura Drever is most often attracted, and repeated visits to places like Orphir, Hobbister and Scapa have given the artist a deep understanding of the fabric and form of these and other iconic Orkney landscapes. Hoy (or Háey, the high island), is also a favoured location. The island, which Walter Scott (1771-1832) noted ‘…assumes a majestic mountainous character’ ³ —is altogether more imposing than the rest of the islands and the lofty, rounded hills are clearly expressive of the forces of nature over time. Paintings such as Haist, Háey and Breck offer a sense of the geology of these unpeopled landscapes and, through the artist’s careful modulation of tone and colour, a feeling of slowly evolving space. 

Walking is a key part of Drever’s working practice (“…walking through the landscape has always been the…core focus of my work.” ⁴) and while drawings are made on location, and photographs taken for reference, they act as an aid-memoir and rarely form the basis of a finished work. 

Experience is gained in familiar places, accruing over time, and is brought into focus through reflection and experimentation back in the studio. 

Drever’s interest in Orkney place names and words—The Orkney Norn is a book she keeps close at hand in her studio—responds to the signs of Nordic identity that are still evident across the islands. As William P.L. Thomson (1933-2016), the Orkney historian and rector of Kirkwall Grammar School—Drever’s alma mater—identifies, ‘The Norse, whatever their relationship to the previous population, indelibly stamped the islands with many thousands of their own place-names—the whole vocabulary of today’s landscape is unmistakably Norse.’ ⁵ Paintings of Hoy, for instance, depict locations with evocative place names such as Cuilags, Clicknafea and Greenhill. Other works pick up on dialect words including Teebro, the shimmering haze of a summer’s day, or Knab—a little hillock, and Reevo—a ridge in a cultivated field. The titles offer a clue to the subject of the painting—a literal yet multi-layered way marker—that is analogous to the painted or drawn surface of the work itself. The paintings build up through layers of tonal variations, with expressive marks that punctuate and animate the surface, offering an enigmatic re-imagining of the experience of being in a particular landscape.

While Laura Drever’s work undoubtedly builds on that of other artists who have surveyed the unique contours of Orkney’s landscapes in the past, she also belongs to another distinct tradition. Drever’s work sits within a Northern European lineage of landscape painting that found a focus in Scotland through art schools across the country. Edinburgh College of Art, in particular, has nurtured landscape artists over many decades, producing distinctive figures such as William Gillies (1898-1973), Anne Redpath (1895-1965) and Wilhelmina Barns-Graham. Drever studied drawing and painting in Edinburgh at the turn of the last century and was taught skills in observation, drawing and art theory that she has applied to her work in the Orkney landscape over the last twenty years, pushing at the boundaries of the traditional practice of recording and interpreting the natural world through art.

The paintings, drawings and prints brought together in Teebro represent the first solo exhibition of Drever’s work to be held at the Pier Arts Centre and reflects a prolonged and concerted period of work by the artist. Thanks are due to Laura for her patience and generosity over the last two or more years in bringing this exhibition to fruition.

Andrew Parkinson, Curator, The Pier Arts Centre, June 2022

1 An Orkney Anthology Volume II, Selected Works Ernest W. Marwick, (Kirkwall: 2012), p. 180

2 Unpublished letter written by Sylvia Wishart to Laura Dever, October 2002.

3 Walter Scott, The Voyage of the Pharos-Walter Scott’s cruise around Scotland in 1814, (Edinburgh: 1998), p. 54

4 Interview with the artist, 21/04/2022 transcribed by Kari Adams.

5 William P. L. Thomson, The New History of Orkney, (Edinburgh: 2016), p. 40