Van Heemstra's landscapes capture not only the wilderness of here beloved Scotland, but also its sacred and eternal qualities, its ancient forms. its astonishing celestial light, so that we too can feel utterly and truly alive.
Annabel Abbs, writer
Windswept presents Geraldine van Heemstra's visceral exploration of Scotland's remote wilderness through a series of multi-media, including paintings, watercolours, drawings, etchings, sculpture and wind instruments.
Venturing to isolated corners of the Scottish islands and highlands on foot or by boat, van Heemstra collaborates with the raw elements and her work becomes a translation of this vital engagement. She expresses the link between human and non-human interaction, reflecting and reinforcing the intangibility of wind and weather, questioning our position as the human subject in the artistic creation.
No pure blue skies, calm and heat-basked seas here. Rather, the bracing and invigorating experience of giving oneself over to the elements - to feel the wind, taste the salt, sense the earth, catch shafts of light - and be all the move alive for it. That Geraldine can condense the power and sensation of the vast expansiveness of Scotland's tempestuous coast forms part of her work's most enduring and emotive qualities.
Charlie Minter, Director of Winsor Birch Fine Art & Sculpture Company
Van Heemstra graduated from City & Guilds of London Art school in 2019 (MA) and was awarded the Norman Ackroyd prize for etching. She was shortlisted for the Clifford Chance Postgraduate Printmaking in London 2019, nominated as a finalist for The Signature Art Prize 2020 and winner of the Intaglio Printmakers Prize in 2021, and in 2024 she was given the Nancy Graham Memorial Book Award at the Royal Scottish Academy's centenary exhibition of Visual Arts Scotland.
View the exhibition brochure below