Ahead of the Clouds: Gemma Petrie

Gemma Petrie graduated from Edinburgh College of Art in 2005 with a bachelors degree in Drawing and Painting. She is a Scottish Artist, now based in Portmahomack where she can be found trawling the beach in search of new worlds, microscopic environs and curious creatures. Petrie applies her talents as a watercolorist and mixed media artist to translate these findings into mesmerising abstract artworks of surprise and delight, offering her audience a surreal escapism.

The immediacy of Petrie’s work can be misleading, implying a simplicity that does not exist. Whilst drawing visual inspiration from her external sphere, Petrie’s work is equivalently influenced by the intimate ongoings of her personal psyche. She visually grapples between the uncomfortable and the magical, layering emotional response with recurring motifs. 

In her first major solo exhibition, ‘Ahead of the Clouds’, Petrie generously invites her audience into the complex ecosystem of her imagination, subtly exposing the psychological intimacies of her journey as a mother, artist and explorer. Petrie offers an extensive collection of works, a constant stream of thought across various dimensions, in a show of wonderment fuelled by curiosity.

‘Ahead of the Clouds’ will open on the 24th of March at Browns Gallery Inverness and will continue showing until the 15th of April. We thoroughly recommend stepping into this abyss of otherworldly enchantment.