Rowan Paton | Great Escapes

ROWAN PATON

Great Escapes

ROWAN PATON

Great Escapes

February 2026

Great Escapes

This February, we are delighted to present Great Escapes, Rowan Paton’s first major exhibition at The Scottish Gallery. Working across painting, collage, and printmaking, Paton creates joyous visual worlds that are both imagined and intimately connected to her lived experience.

Paton studied at Edinburgh College of Art, before completing a Master’s degree at Yale University in the United States. Working with limited materials during her studies sharpened her sensitivity for restraint and negative space, refining her intuitive approach to composition. Despite her diverse practice, paint remains her primary medium. In her Edinburgh garden studio, her process becomes a negotiation between instinct and control: the surface of the canvas is painted, pared back, turned to the wall, revived, and rebalanced. Her works feature landscapes and still life elements constructed through collage, found imagery, and memory. Though inspired by Paton’s time on Arran and the west coast, these landscapes rarely depict a single place. Instead, cliffs, peaks, and ridges are taken from multiple sources and pieced together jigsaw-like to achieve the desired effect. These symbolic mountains are metaphors for geological time and provide a means to explore themes of environmental change, informed by the artist’s own experience in the outdoors, and the humbling sense of insignificance in the presence of nature’s power. Her environments are as much representational as emotional terrains, their unique palettes determined as much by circumstance as intention. Taking inspiration from music, poetry, and a continual need for a visual reset, Paton’s work reflects the shifting dialogue between the vastness of the natural world and inner contemplation, inviting viewers to find their own meaning in striking images that celebrate our shared existence.

THE SCOTTISH GALLERY

New Perspectives

Coming from a long line of painters, stonemasons, designers, and writers, creativity and the creative life were normalised from a young age. I remember making a painting at around seven years old on a piece of thick card I had saved, using paints my mother bought for me. I clearly recall realising then that I was an image maker and knowing that this was my path.

At Edinburgh College of Art, I produced large quantities of work, often having to use corridor space to paint. I accessed the printmaking department and discovered the graphic quality of screen-printing early on. The discovery of Hockney was a revelation. I worked with thin, built-up washes on canvas, using organic and constructed elements, and later with painterly markmaking combined with text, graphics, and collaged elements from vintage

I spent time in the States completing a Masters in Painting and Printmaking, where I refined my collage techniques. Everything I made was either drawn directly on the wall with pencil or charcoal, or created sculpturally using found and appropriated objects, often as installations that could be deconstructed or rubbed away at the end of a semester. This taught me restraint, stripping back, and an understanding of what could be made with very little. I also came to fully appreciate negative, blank, or underworked space. Paint has always been my favoured material. I am seduced by its viscosity, complexity, and versatility, and I learn something new about it every time I am in the studio. I will often reduce a painting before it is finished, taking away large sections, then turn it to the wall for a few days to make more constructive decisions regarding the balance of calm

As a keen collector of objects, specific collections around my home often hold my attention: vintage patterned fabrics, chairs, clocks, ceramics, flowers, and plants. So much so that I like to construct invented worlds for them. I use found imagery or my own photographs, cutting and reshaping them to create my own interiors and landscapes, sometimes mirroring images to form new invented terrain. The mountain is a recurring motif because I feel deeply connected to them. Growing up on the west coast of Scotland, on Arran and later in Aberdeenshire near Bennachie, they were always on my periphery. I understand I have been in a city too long when I need a complete visual reset. Seeking out a landscape or view provides a sense of perspective, resetting my nervous system entirely. In the studio, I can do this by crafting my own alternative worlds or realities that offer me space to play, escape, and repair.

I have never wanted to copy a landscape or a still life directly, though I use appropriated graphic imagery and draw heavily from nature’s colours, patterns, and archetypes to create my own contexts. Belgian linen provides an excellent surface, not just as a beautiful ground, but also because it is fiercely tough. If a painting is not working, I will often hose it down in the garden. The linen is strong enough to withstand the battering of a painter’s process.

Music is the most important thing to me outside painting; I rarely work in silence. I am drawn to lyricism and poetry, especially Whitman, Morgan, and MacCaig. Words, ideas, and visual triggers are noted, sketched, or stored for future work. My painting process unfolds organically, shaped by the feelings and experiences of each moment. The resulting works remain open to individual interpretation.

ROWAN PATON

ROWAN PATON

Rowan Paton is an award-winning painter based in Edinburgh, Scotland. A graduate of Yale University School of Art and Edinburgh College of Art, she explores the interplay between materiality and narrative in her work. Known for her bold yet nuanced approach to painting, her work has been exhibited widely across the UK. She has received numerous accolades, including the Edinburgh Printmakers Edition Award and the W. Gordon Smith Award. Her paintings are held in collections including Marchmont House and Dumfries House.

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

2026 Great Escapes, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh

2025 Botanical Reverie: Flora and Form, Velarde Gallery, Kingsbridge Still Life | The Beauty of the Ordinary, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh

2024 Frontiers: Painting in Scotland Now, Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh 198th Annual Exhibition of Art and Architecture, Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh

2023 Wanderings, Patriothall, Edinburgh

2022 SSA Annual Exhibition, Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh

2021 Totally Overwhelmed, Irving Gallery, Oxford

2020 SURGE, Tatha Gallery and Visual Arts Scotland, Newport-on-Tay Resonant Strangeness, Marram Arts

2019 193rd Annual Exhibition of Art and Architecture, Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh ALIGHT, Visual Arts Scotland

2019 Lost All Reason & Direction (with Alan Grieve), Tent Gallery, Edinburgh College of Art, Edinburgh

2018 Current, Tatha Gallery, Newport-on-Tay

2015–25 Frequent exhibitor at Royal Scottish Academy, Visual Arts Scotland, and Society of Scottish Artists

Published by The Scottish Gallery to coincide with the exhibition:

Rowan Paton

Great Escapes

5 - 28 February 2026

Exhibition can be viewed online at: scottish-gallery.co.uk/rowanpaton

ISBN: 978-1-917803-14-4

Designed and Produced by The Scottish Gallery

Printed by Pure Print

Artist portraits: Chris Watt

Front cover: Range, 2025, acrylic and print collage on Belgian linen, 137 x 137 cm (cat.3) (detail)

All rights reserved. No part of this catalogue may be reproduced in any form by print, photocopy or by any other means, without the permission of the copyright holders.

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