Gwen Adair

Dumfries based artist Gwen Adair is a graduate of Glasgow School of Art, where she studied Graphics and Illustration. She then worked as an Art & Design teacher for many years and is now a full time artist. Acknowledged in several major awards she was a finalist in the Scottish Portrait Awards in 2018, 2020 and longlisted in 2021 and 2022. She also won the coveted Dumfries and Galloway Life Visual Artist of the Year 2022. 

"I paint from the life and also from photos, and each has merits. In a portrait there should be a relationship between the painter and the sitter, so I believe at least one sitting should be from the life. On the other hand, when the painting is of a stranger and is painted as a study or to create an image I feel is interesting and arresting to look at, I will happily work exclusively from photos, because I find it fascinating that we think we can tell so much about a person from a fraction of a second of their life. We read the expression, then create a whole narrative.”

Painting straight onto the canvas, sketching out the shapes and outlines in paint, she then starts with the sky and works forward, adding in the fine details, highlights and shadows at the end.