Artist Gwen Black

Gwen Black has an Honors Degree in Fine Art, Printmaking from Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen. In her work she uses paint and collage along with printmaking techniques, often incorporating text as a key to the narrative content. “The Past is a foreign land, they do things differently there - This body of work has been created from the reality and the invention of that foreign land.”

Gwen explores the concepts of family and memories throughout her work. She sees these things as being intertwined:

'Everyone has family and every family has its own history. Not every individual family member has the same memory of family events or family life. Memory is, at best, a fragile thing and can become lost, distorted or reinvented. Snapshots from the past can become postcards to the future, a visual means to unlocking memories which have been hidden for years. Collective memory is vital in the retelling of family stories across all generations. It is all too easy for past family members to be forgotten, yet it only takes one snapshot or one well told anecdote to keep them alive in the present generation and for future generations. Every family has its heroes, its renegades and its tender souls. Over time and with the intrinsic nature of storytelling, the facts become modified, exaggerated, enhanced, ignored or completely fabricated….. no one would ever know to what extent!'