Collection: Julia Gurney

Since graduating from the Royal College of Art, Julia Gurney has worked with a range of different media and subjects, including portraits and cityscapes. On moving to Helensburgh 27 years ago it was the beauty of the West Coast of Scotland which caught her imagination, motivating her to develop a way of capturing the effect on those landscapes of the ever changing light and moods resulting from the varying weather conditions.

The stimulus of painting a particular place is important to Julia. First hand experience of that place and time, ensuring direct contact with nature, is a discipline which she imposes rigorously on her work. This discipline informs her main preoccupation, which is to convey the flux of the weather and the sense of imminent change which results from that; approaching rain, skies clearing after a storm, lifting mist, dying light and so on. Her main challenge is to reflect the character of light cast upon the landscape from dynamic skies.