May Open Studios
An Invitation to North Fife Open Studios
There is a specific kind of magic that happens in the studio when the haar begins to lift from the Tay, revealing that sharp, silver-edged light that defines our corner of the world. It’s a landscape that doesn't just sit there; it breathes, shifts, and demands to be felt. For thirteen years now, I’ve been trying to catch that breath on canvas—and for thirteen years, you’ve been coming along for the journey.
I am delighted to invite you back to my studio for this year’s North Fife Open Studios.
The 13th Chapter
Thirteen years feels like a significant milestone. In the world of painting, it represents thousands of hours spent wrestling with the horizon, searching for that precise moment where the land meets the sky and the solid becomes ethereal. My recent work continues this exploration—delving deeper into the tactile memory of the Scottish wilderness.
What to Expect
This isn't just an exhibition; it’s a glimpse into the "behind-the-scenes" chaos and quiet of the creative process. When you visit, you’ll find:
Fresh Perspectives: A new collection of paintings ranging from expansive, atmospheric oils to intimate, energetic sketches.
See the brushes, the pigment-stained floors, and the sketches that serve as the skeletons for my larger works.
I love the conversations these weekends spark. Whether we talk about the technicality of a glaze or the shared experience of a particular Highland ridge, your presence completes the work.
Planning Your Visit
The North Fife Open Studios is a great way to spend a day or a weekend! Beyond my own doors, you’ll find a vibrant community of makers and thinkers tucked away in the folds of our hills.
When: May 2nd – 4th
Time: 10:00 am – 5:00 pm
Where: 8 wellpark terrace east, Newport on Tay DD6 8HT. Please go to contact page for further directions
"To paint the landscape is not to record it, but to inhabit it."
There will be tea, perhaps a few biscuits, and certainly plenty of paint. Whether you are a long-time collector or a curious first-timer, I look forward to welcoming you into my home.
Following a Changing Light
Forthcoming solo exhibition at Strathearn Gallery, Crieff.
Exhibition dates: 6th September to 5th October
This body of work draws on memory, experience and observations of the remote areas of Northern Scotland. Embedded both in place and the imagination yet reliant on the mutable and the intangible personalities of the landscape. From the intimate to the vast they are a reflection upon the raw human experience of nature. This exhibition explores these rich experiences and aims to foster a deeper relationship with our natural world.
Please note, paintings will be available a week before the exhibition is launched. If you would like to receive a catalogue please get in touch via email or to be notified in advance please sign up to my mailing list below.
Inner Light • Oil on Board • 2025
Open Studios 2025
Fathom Oil on Board 30x30cm
I look forward to welcoming visitors once again to the annual open studios event of North Fife. Entry is free as is the imagination. Many artists and creatives open their doors and you can have a little snoop at all the work and spaces. I’ll be in my studio at home showing all the work I have been pouring over recently. There will be new work available and work in progress to muse over. The chaos of open studios is always something to embrace. Please get in touch if you aren’t quite able to make these dates as I am happy to accommodate appointments on the days before or just after.
I will also be putting a selection of work in my online shop for the duration of this event please look out for more updates about this launch.
For more details of how to get here please see link below or go to my contact page
Saturday 3rd-10am-5pm
Sunday 4th 10am-5pm
Monday 5th 10am -5pm
The Phenomenal World.
28th Nov- 30th Dec 2024
I am really excited to present this exhibition that has been in the works for two years. This is the second major solo with the Scottish Gallery and one which encompasses the idea of the experience of being in the Scottish landscape. The show is now live online and officially opens to the public on the 28th November and will continue through December.
Please book your place at the preview and events using the links below.
PREVIEW- Wed 27th November 6-7.30pm
IN CONVERSATION with Tommy Zyw Sat 30th 12 noon
CHRISTMAS ROCKS coffee morning ray 13th 11am-12noon
Solo Exhibition at The Scottish Gallery
The Phenomenal World, my second major solo exhibition with the Scottish Gallery is approaching at speed. To find out more, in the next few weeks I will be sending out a newsletter. Please sign up to my mailing list for further details.
Preview 27th Nov 6-8pm
Exhibition runs 28th November - 23rd December 2024
Estuary Oil on Board 30×40cm 2023
May Open Studios 4th /5th /6th
10am-5pm each day
The annual North Fife Open studios is upon us once more.The last two months have gone past in the blink of an eye and a Susa I find myself making up for lost time. I believe this is my 10th year of taking part! I always look forward to meeting and greeting everyone and talking through my work. It lets me pause and it allows me to see my painting in a new light.
The north and the remote continue to be my muse. The sombre, last glow of winter twilight to the energising, deepening skies, mid storm. The appreciation of the ethereal, the beauty that moves on and through. I do hope you can come and spend sometime here in the studio with me and enjoy these secluded spaces.
For. a short time I will be making my new work available from my online shop too. Happy Browsing!
Open Studios
On the 18th November 10.30-4pm I will be opening up my studio to visitors for one day only. I have some new work to show you and a collection from my store. I do hope you can come along.
My address is 8 Wellpark Terrace East Newport on Tay DD6 8HT
If you are interested in purchasing but cannot make these events please do book an appointment via info@helenglassford.co.uk
Discerning Eye
Earlier on on the year I made a series of new small quiet paintings. I consider them quiet because of their simplicity. It is tricky to talk about these new works. Do I need to explain them? Well, no not really yet when I am told they are not like my normal work I feel defensive. It’s difficult to encapsulate ideas and thoughts within the fuddle and muddle of the written word. Landscape is my muse and painting my medium. I sometimes think of the land as containing it’s own ideas and thoughts, these change with the day, time and season. It passes on and offers its imprint onto our psyche and souls. Past histories, fallen trees, paths overgrown, stones and hills, our acute awareness of the losses, our optimistic vision, imagination and memory. Our senses and influences are not linear nor singular. They rely on and are energised by each other - a multi directional matrix. My paintings are a reflection of this. Deeply rooted in this experience of the multi faceted nature of the land and the experimentation to find the natural language for the moment. Like the light they don’t need to be explained. Like the stones and hills they are simply there. Yet we have a need to understand. There is no need, perhaps we can just wonder.
I am delighted that two of these paintings have been selected from thousands of entries for The Discerning Eye exhibition Mall Galleries London 2023
Sun Set
Sun Space
Royal Scottish Watercolour Society
I’m delighted to announce that I have been elected as professional member of the Royal Scottish Watercolour Society.
Radio 4 Open Country programme
Inspiration on The Tay
I am delighted to share the news that Radio 4’s Dougie Vipond came to visit me back in May during my open studios event. He was recording a new programme for Open Country on Radio 4. My part was a light hearted interview (including chatting to visitors to my studio) regarding the inspiration that The River Tay has had on my work. The programme will be aired on the 6th July 3pm
“Dougie Vipond visits the River Tay, which runs from its source in the Highlands, past Dundee and out to sea. For centuries, the Tay estuary has shaped how creative people have expressed themselves. Starting at McDuff's Cross, the author Robin Crawford explains the Tay's link to Shakespeare - who was said to have drawn inspiration for his play Macbeth from this area. Pre-Raphaelite painters Turner and Millais knew the area well, Beatrix Potter imagined some of her most famous creations on the Tay's banks, and some of Scotland's best known artists such as Raeburn and Naismith depicted the landscape in their paintings. Dougie visits the studio of a contemporary landscape artist, Helen Glassford, to find out how her view of the silvery Tay continues to have an impact on artists today. “ BBC Radio 4
Produced by Ruth Sanderson
Dougie Vipond and Helen Glassford In her studio in Newport on Tay
Modern Masters London
London 6th-9th June
I am honoured and grateful to be included in 10 YEARS OF MODERN MASTERS exhibition in London hosted by The Scottish Gallery.
“…We present an exclusive collection of post war and contemporary paintings in London…”
Artists include ; Barbara Balmer, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, John Bellany, Elizabeth Blachadder, FCB Cadell, Doug Cocker, Victoria Crowe, Alan Davie, Joan Eardley, JD Fergusson, Ian Fleming, Alexandrr Goudie, Lachlan Goudie, Derrick Guild, John Houston, GL Hunter, Angie Lewin, William McTaggart, James Morrison, Alberto Morrocco, Lean Morocco, Lilian Neilson, Denis People, SJPeploe, Robin Philipson, Anne Redpath, James Downie Robertson, Duncan Shanks, Janise Yntema.
For further information please visit this link to the exhibition. Modern Masters London
Opening Times | London
Tuesday 6 June 12noon – 5pm
Wednesday 7 June 11am – 6pm
Thursday 8 June 11am – 6pm
Friday 9 June 11am – 3pm
Gallery 8, 8 Duke Street, St James’, London, SW1Y 6BN
I will be present in the gallery at the champagne reception 6-7.30pm. Please get in touch with the gallery for details. mail@scottish-gallery.co.uk
Solo Exhibition • Every Waking Moment at Strathearn Gallery
Every Waking Moment - Helen Glassford - 27th May to 25th June
For more details please visit the Strathearn Gallery website
Each landscape, has an atmosphere and climate of its own. As you turn the corner and face the sun, the wind now at your back, the ambience shifts. With you and you within it.
This is an exhibition, about these moments, the natural language of nature and the connections we have with it. Noting the shifts in air, light, wind, the fast and fleeting flurries, interspersed with slower, timeless pauses. Light diamonds dance on the lochan, choreographed by the north wind. Disappearing as quickly as they came by the orchestration of passing clouds. Almost imperceptible changes but there all the same. At other times peaty darkness drives through with January squalls leaving a noisy presence that lingers. Later, a silent twilight which has an awareness of its own. Every minute the atmosphere changes we are simply the participants or perhaps custodians of those moments. They are there to be sensed, there to be noticed and to be part of and inspired by.
These oil paintings are my way of communicating what I see and experience when in the landscape whether it be in North East Fife where I live or in the more remote areas that I love to explore, in the hope that others may see it and experience it too.
Open Studios
It gives me great pleasure to invite you to my Open Studios Exhiibition. Sat 29th Sun 30th April, Mon 1st May 10am-5pm. Once a year I take part in the North Fife Open Studios. Free entry to the creative spaces of 73 artists and makers in North Fife. For more information and directions please visit the Open Studios website
My studio address is 8 Wellpark Terrace East, Newport on Tay, Fife DD6 8HT. 07768 481751 I look forward not meeting and greeting many people over the bank holiday weekend.
Forthcoming Exhibitions
Open Studios - Sat 29th April - Monday 1st May 2023. I’m looking forward to welcoming you all to my annual open studios. Work will be hung throughout the studio and house for you to enjoy.
Solo Show at Strathearn Gallery Crieff- 27th May - 25th June 2023
Solo Show at The Scottish Gallery Edinburgh December 2024
It's all part of the process.
Process; understanding the complexities
Now that the schools are back I am now moving forward with new work and new ideas. Ideas that have been taking their time to form since my show in Edinburgh. I fully admit to have been a little burnt out in the weeks after my exhibition; a year of intense creativity. It’s a feeling that can slowly creep up on you, focus dips yet the will is still there. Still in the zone of feeling you need to work but the hand and mind not connecting. My work ethic since leaving college was always to show up in the studio despite sometimes not feeling completely present, this is often where discoveries are made pushing through and bypassing the blip. So this time I decided to simply pick up a pencil and draw. No big paintings to battle with therefore preserving the energy I had remaining. I love using sketchbooks as they take all the pressure off, marks are made without judgement and without the need to take them any further. They are simply what they are and no more and no less. I also set myself a small challenge of making two loose leaf drawings a day. These have really started to excite me since I see them as the essential yet skeletal initial reactions to my wanderings in the landscape. As many of you may know my process has always involved exploration, from firstly being in the land but also through the reading, research and then to the painting medium I use. In the past I admit to having been a little frustrated with myself one day using watercolour, the next gouache, then pencil, pastel, oil so on and so forth. Chopping and changing with each new idea and mood. It often feels I am juggling many ideas at once with little focus. This is simply how my work evolves; it is the layering of multiple ideas, moments, marks, thoughts, moods, a passage of music and painterly techniques that brings about my finished paintings. To add to this complexity I have also been ‘playing’ with film, initially as a diversion from paint, but by doing so it has created a means for me to show and understand my process. Films of water layered over painted marks, or films of me drawing layered over the gentle movement of shifting clouds. Perhaps these are a digital version of a sketchbook, or simply another way for me to create. It’s all part of the process. The element that brings all these disparate ideas and methods together is ‘time.’ The time it takes to process experiences and thoughts, and for these to slowly and sometimes disparately and abstractly find their way into my work. These morph and change into sometimes more direct painting and others more layered and complex imagery. Either way I am pleased to be seeing and making again. My work is string of moments, each has it’s value: clouds moving across the sky, wind rippling the silvered water, a sentence remembered. Inspiration is everywhere and painting serves as a way of making sense of these disparate observations.
A string of moments
Summary of Summer Exhibitions
Work is currently available from
Resipole Gallery • West Coast Scotland
Heinzel Gallery • Aberdeen
Iona House Gallery • Woodstock
Encounters Update
Encounters Updates- Films and Reviews
Fanfare • Oil on Board • 2021
As my solo show at The Scottish Gallery draws to a close on Saturday (30th April) I am happy to share the news that several press reviews have been written. I am absolutely delighted at the response to the exhibition. Huge thanks go to the amazing team at The Scottish who provided me with incredible positive energy and encouragement through the whole show. I have added all of the reviews to the Press page of my website here for your perusal. It is privilege to have been reviewed by the Fleming Collection and I still feel so humbled by Jan Patience’s generous words about my painting. There are also two more short films to watch on The Scottish Gallery You Tube Channel which canoe found on my films page. Thank you to everyone who has visited and for all your messages of support , I’m truly touched by all the connections made. H x
Events at The Scottish Gallery
Matterport virtual tour. (Please see images for true colour)
I have three forthcoming events at The Scottish Gallery in conjunction with my solo exhibition Encounters. Please see below for details
Meet The Artist in The Gallery • Saturday 2nd April - 11am - 1pm • I will be in the Gallery on Dundas Street meeting and greeting visitors and chatting about my work. See link for details. There is no need to book this event just turn up.
Meet the Artist on Zoom • Tuesday 5th April - 5pm • I will be in conversation with gallery director Tommy Zyw talking about my process and ideas behind my solo show. See link for details - Please sign up for this event
Online Exhibition Tour • Join me for a personal online tour of my exhibition with The Scottish Gallery. PLease sign up for this event.
Encounters at The Scottish Gallery
Exhibition Dates
31st March -30th April
Preview 30th March
Idling • Oil on Board • 2021
“It seems appropriate for me to define the experience of landscape as chance meetings, or encounters, with the influence of that experience going beyond the purely elemental. It is internal and peripheral, time and touch, mood and memory. It imprints its character on the psyche, leaves traces in the memory, and strays far beyond any physical map……” Helen Glassford . Excerpt from Encounters Catalogue 2022
I am delighted to say that my debut solo exhibition at The Scottish Gallery is now live on line. It has been an incredible nine months of travel and preparation as I have journeyed through a body of work that includes landscapes inspired by an early Winter visit to Assynt and a Summer trip to The Western Isles and St Kilda. There was so much I wanted to say with paint but feel this curation encompasses the true nature of the Encounters I experienced. My hope is, that you too can experience them.
The exhibition will go live on The Scottish Gallery website on the 22nd March. If you are signed up for my mailing list I too will notify you of this. The Exhibiton will be launched on the 30th March and open to the public from the 31st March.
The Gallery have made a beautiful catalogue to accompany the exhibition. If you wish to purchase it please follow the link below.
It is my privilege to have created this body of work, my thanks go to The Scottish Gallery for inviting me.
