Inside Joyce Gunn Cairns’ Edinburgh Studio | The Sunday Journal No.3
Joyce Gunn Cairns, painting, 2026.
Nothing about Joyce Gunn Cairns is contrived.
I visited her studio this week in Edinburgh, where she’s worked for the past twenty-five years. It’s a cosy space where she comes everyday to work, she says to give her week structure. Books are everywhere, stacked in piles, clearly returned to rather than put away.
Joyce's studio, 2026.
Paint in window at Joyce's studio, 2026.
Intensely curious, and engaged with the world beyond the studio, within moments of sitting down, she points me towards an article open on the chair. It’s an Observer piece about a lost portrait of Francis Bacon by Lucian Freud, recently rediscovered in Berlin. It felt like a small insight into how she thinks - following the threads around art, literature, history, people, memory and ideas.
Article from The Observer, 27th April 2026. To Catch and Art Thief, by Stephen Smith.
It’s tempting to draw a neat line to Lucian Freud here, but it’s probably more accurate to say they share a certain attitude. A willingness to sit with a subject for long enough that something real begins to surface - observed, and left slightly open to the viewer.
Joyce Gunn Cairns sitting with her work, 2026.
Her own work carries that same sense of attention. Faces - both human and animal - hold a special kind of presence. Not polished or idealised, but full of personality. There’s often a slight awkwardness to them, which makes them feel more real. She tells me that she is less interested in likeness, which perhaps allows her to build more on the characters she creates. Despite this, she shows me drawings of literary friends with beautiful likenesses.
Joyce Gunn Cairns with Alasdair Gray.
Alasdair Gray Drawing by Joyce Gunn Cairns.
Alasdair Gray by Joyce Gunn Cairns.
She speaks about her work rather self-deprecatingly. And yet, there’s no sense of hesitation in the work itself. If anything, the opposite. A persistence that feels less like determination and more like compulsion, something she simply has to do. Along with a willingness to “destroy” the work and see where that takes things.
Drawing of Colm Tobin by Joyce Gunn Cairns.
Her long-standing relationships with writers and poets seem to feed naturally into her work in the sense that each figure feels like it carries a story. That depth of engagement hasn’t gone unnoticed. Her work is held in the collection of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, which feels entirely fitting. These are paintings and drawings that stay with you, not because they declare themselves loudly, but because they hold something back.
Shrew. Watercolour and Pencil on Paper, unframed with mount, 2026.
Barn Owl, Resting. Oil on Board, 2026.
Meeting Joyce confirmed what a special artist she is – unforced and genuine. Spending time in her studio felt like a space shaped by intellect, observing, thinking and an ongoing need to make sense of it all through pencil and paint.
Click here to view and purchase any of Joyce's available works.
Next week, we will be installing our next exhibition, Local Characters (an animal and wildlife mixed exhibition) which will feature some of Joyce's new original work.
Until next Sunday, Adam