A Shared Passion – Margot Sandeman SSA & Norman Gilbert at Tatha Gallery, Fife

The artists Norman Gilbert and Margot Sandeman were both painters who shared the same irresistible passion and urge to create. Both dedicated to their practice they continued to work daily in their studios at home, till the end of their long lives, leaving behind them substantial bodies of work, both paintings and drawings. Norman Gilbert was inspired to paint what he knew and loved. The charm of his family life in their domestic settings, portraits of his wife and detailed interiors, rich in the pattern of the plants and furniture that surrounded him. His paintings of his garden and nature display a joyful vivacity, colourful and finely detailed. Inspiring and a joy to behold, every painting tells a story of relationships, life and love. In his highly coloured and sensitively rendered oils the work crosses boundaries and generations.

Similarly the work of Margot Sandeman drew on her family life and her garden and the Arran landscape which she had visited consistently since childhood and knew so well. She painted the things close to her, her family and the landscapes that she loved, the beauty of which she found pure and magical. Like Norman Gilbert, despite early critical recognition, Sandeman’s work remained under the radar throughout much of her lifetime. However in the past two decades she has gained the notice she deserves with several acquisitions into public collections. Her work has poetry embedded in it, sometimes quite literally. In later years boldly linear and imbued with philosophy, a shared interest led her to collaborate with her art school friend and poet Ian Hamilton Finlay on several of her paintings.

Born in Glasgow, her father was an accomplished watercolourist and her mother an internationally famous embroiderer who trained with Jessie Newberry at Glasgow School of Art. Margot followed in her footsteps, also studying in Glasgow where she met and became a lifelong friend of fellow artist Joan Eardley. They made many painting trips together to Arran which was the Sandeman’s summer base, where Margot created many of the idyllic scenes of figures in nature. Sandeman was a poet, for her the thought, the idea, the atmosphere of beautiful trees and shady lanes, sheep as part of the pattern and shape of the landscape were rare, pure and magical. Light, airy and colourful, the figures are romantically symbolic of her thoughts, philosophy and poetry. In her work there are echoes of Matisse, Seurat and a Japanese Master, tonal harmony and harnessed energy, lyrical and vibrant. Her paintings are instilled with an air of peaceful tranquillity.

Winner of the Guthrie Award, 1964; the Anne Redpath Award, 1970; the Scottish Arts Council Award, 1970 and the Laing Competition, 1989, her works are represented in numerous private and public collections in Scotland and further afield, including the BBC, The Scottish Arts Council, Contemporary Art Society, the City Art Centre, Edinburgh and The Fleming Collection, London. She has had several solo shows in Edinburgh and in Glasgow at Gerber Fine Art and Compass Gallery. Margot Sandeman’s work was exhibited in a major exhibition in the Lillie Art Gallery, 2011 and the ‘Modern Scottish Women, Painters and Sculptors 1885-1965’ exhibition at the National Galleries of Scotland 2015.

The pairing of these two artists together in a joint exhibition presents two painters who gave vivid life to the simplest of still lifes, family portraits and landscapes.

Here is a link to Susan Mansfield's review in the Fleming Collection's 'Scottish Art News':
https://flemingcollection.com/scottish_art_news/news-press/norman-gilbert-margot-sandeman-a-shared-passion?utm_campaign=later-linkinbio-fleming_collection&utm_content=later-30927056&utm_medium=social&utm_source=linkin.bio