The Art and Life of Sheila Girling, St Monan's review - 'vibrant, unconventional, unafraid'

A major exhibition of work by Sheila Girling shows her to be a significant abstract painter, writes Susan Mansfield

Neil Hanna | Neil Hanna

The Art and Life of Sheila Girling, Bowhouse, St Monans ****

Pittenween Arts Festival, various venues, Pittenweem ****

Happily, we are in a period when women artists who have previously received much less attention than they deserved are being rediscovered and celebrated. Sheila Girling, if her name is known at all, is probably best known as the wife of sculptor Sir Anthony Caro. However, in her own right, she is a significant abstract painter. 

When it comes to staging a major selling exhibition of Girling’s work, spanning five decades, and also including several sculptures by Caro, a barn in the East Neuk of Fife does not seem the most obvious location. But curator Sophie Camu, who runs arts organisation Space to Breathe, has pulled off a remarkable feat at Bowhouse, St Monans, thoughtfully and creatively turning a space used for farmers’ markets into a superb, light-filled gallery.

Girling was an award-winning student at the Royal Academy (where she met Caro). Painting took a back seat while she raised her children, but it seems never to have left her mind. When the family moved to Vermont in 1963, for Caro to take up a teaching position, she was part of an artistic circle which included Robert Motherwell, Kenneth Noland (at whose suggestion she started to paint in acrylic) and Helen Frankenthaler. She described her long marriage as “a 64-year conversation about art”.

The earliest works here are three very large, tall paintings from the late 1970s in intense, joyous shades of red and yellow. The paint has been allowed to run down their length in what one can only imagine is a dance between freedom and control. They are mounted at the end of the room like a kind of altarpiece and, in and of themselves, they signal the presence of an important artist.

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And then there is the rest of the room. Girling worked in a number of different styles over five decades, all of them recognisably hers. The earlier works are expressive abstracts, skilfully balancing bold and contrasting colours. In the 1980s, she began to use collage, cutting or tearing paper or canvas, which enabled her to add layers to her work and make more clearly defined forms.

Some works are pure abstraction, but often there is a suggestion of a landscape, a horizon, a human form, objects on a table top. Some of her late paintings are more clearly descriptive (she continued to work until just before her death in 2015 at the age of 90) but they have the same boldness, the same facility with colour.

In the 2000s, she produced some large-scale religious paintings - her Last Supper and Agony in the Garden are included here - perhaps less for religious reasons than to enter herself into the lineage of (mainly male) artists who have offered their take on these subjects. Her take is uniquely her own, collaged forms which dance on the edge of abstraction, the colours vibrant, unconventional, unafraid.

Meanwhile, Pittenweem Arts Festival is promising to be bigger and better than ever this year, with 150 artists exhibiting in spaces throughout the little East Neuk town. This year also boasts is an expanded programme of events and workshops for adults and children.

Two of the invited artists, Charles Poulsen and Pauline Burbidge, are sharing the space at the Old Town Hall. Poulsen’s striking large-scale abstract pencil drawings on one side of the room balance a row of sculptures on the other side, inspired by (and in some cases made from) trees at Marchmont House.

Marchmont is also important to Burbidge, who works with textiles. A beautifully crafted quilt printed with a pattern of leaves from the estate is titled In Honour of Hugo, celebrating the legacy of the late owner, Hugo Burge. Another quilt, which features drawing and stitching, was inspired by a week spent with the ethnographic collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. Two more quilts are displayed in the centre of the room so visitors can appreciate both front and (contrasting) back.

The five invited artists who will be at the 2024 Pittenweem Arts Festival (pic: Julie Arbuthnott)

At the intriguingly named Old Men’s Club at the harbour, brothers David and Robert Mach are presenting a joint exhibition. David has made a new body of collages which promise to be playful and darkly humorous, with works including Tracey Emin’s Bed (Made) and Anthony Gormley’s Bed (Single). Robert, who works mainly in foil, has been enjoying discovering the patterns on the foils used for by hairdressers, as well as continuing to work with his signature Tunnocks’ tea cake wrappers. 

On the harbourside, photographer Liam Dickson is displaying portraits of East Neuk fishermen, each with a QR code which links to an interview. This project continues in the town’s fishmarket - an olefactory experience as well as a visual and auditory one - and Dickson’s documentary film following six months in the lives of East Neuk fishermen premieres in Pittenweem on 8 August.

Elsewhere, artists resident in the town open up their homes: painter David Henderson shows not only his own work, which ranges from landscapes to the nearly abstract, but hosts fellow artists Jill MacLeod, Siobhan McLaughlin and ceramicist John Scott. Landscape painter Kirsten Boston shows in the garage next door.

The talented Behrens family have also turned their home into a gallery: look out for Reinhard Behrens’ first ever Naboland painting, made in Hamburg in 1977, the magic realism of his wife Margaret Smyth, the fine print-making of daughter Kirstie and elegant kinetic sculptures of son David.

Amongst all the rest, there are landscapes and wildlife by Derek Robertson and Liz Myhill, fish shoals made from the rubber of inner tubes by Claudia Maldonado, expressive watercolours by Shetland-based Peter Davis, seashore cyanotypes by Marysia Lachowicz, work by neurodiverse group Neuk Collective and Eileen Herlihy’s installation of flowers, Filmentous, on the seafront, which will grow and bloom as the festival progresses.

The Art and Life of Sheila Girling is open until 5 August, then runs 17 August until 1 September. The Pittenweem Art Festival runs from 3-10 August, see pittenweemartsfestival.co.uk