I ended my post last week (‘Looking for art in all the wrong places’) saying that as an antidote to art gallery disappointment I was going to start looking more closely at the art that flowed through people’s lives. I wanted to see furniture, articles of clothing, the colours of housepaint, handmade things. When I mentioned ‘birds flying around a handmade lampshade’ I realised that I was describing the work of someone I already knew; an artist called Sarah Campbell, who lives on the Scottish island of Lismore.
I first saw Sarah’s lampshades and cushions in a shop in the Lismore Heritage Centre, many years ago. The lampshades were made of the most beautiful textured linen, with huge areas of space, like Japanese paintings.
Her work makes me think of something Michele Pollock said last week in her Art and Nature essay:
Long before something becomes a concept for my artwork, it is just a noticing: a moth resting on a flower, the geometry of mushroom gills, the shapes of seeds. Instead of announcing themselves as “content,” these moments arrive quietly, just asking to be seen.
Art and Nature, 17.3.26
Sarah lives on a croft in the middle of the wild and gentle tufted hillocks of Lismore, an island just off the west coast of Scotland. It’s an unusual and special place: a limestone outcrop which supports an abundance of plants, flowers and wildlife.
One of her current projects involves extracting dye from every plant on her croft:
Inspired by a tribe in Burkina Faso who rank plants highest on the wisdom scale, Sarah’s latest project is a deep dive into the natural world around her. Seeing plants not just as flora but as neighbours, extended family, and protectors, she aims to learn from them and understand their profound power.
To do this, Sarah is embarking on a vast project: she’s extracting dye from every plant on her croft. She meticulously dyes swatches of wool, cotton, linen, and silk, then modifies half of her swatches with iron.
Sarah also makes intaglio prints, using discarded seed milk cartons, each one of which is a reflection of her relationship to a specific place or plant, some of which have plants and twigs embossed directly onto the paper.
And then I saw that she’s also now making paintings.
Her paintings feel different to me from the kind of thing that I tend to see in galleries.
I was at an exhibition in the centre of Edinburgh the other day, of a well-known and very established artist who I had never heard of before. It was upstairs from something else I was visiting; I went up to have a look with no expectations.
I found it really confusing. I couldn’t understand the curation, which I realised afterwards was something about not being able to find any kind of story in the paintings themselves, nothing that drew me in. Without this, I started looking for a story through time in the exhibition as a whole, wanting to understand the artist’s journey, their process. But it wasn’t there. Figurative work from one decade was juxtaposed with abstract work from twenty years later. I couldn’t see anything happening, either in the paintings, or looking at them all together.
I hadn’t realised that I was looking for stories when I looked at paintings. The sense that something is going on, beyond whatever it is that’s being portrayed, literally or otherwise. Most of the time I probably can’t describe or name what that something is, but nonetheless, if I’m lucky, it’s there.
Sarah’s paintings whisper stories to me. I don’t know exactly what the stories are, but that doesn’t matter, my mind can make them up, or feel them without knowing their precise shape.
‘Conversation’, Acrylic on canvas with batiq and stitch
I went looking for half-remembered lampshades, and found some paintings that I would never have seen otherwise. You never know what you’re going to find when you take off in a new direction…
"I was going to start looking more closely at the art that flowed through people’s lives."
Thankyou for this Tamsin.
Your instincts are so right about this. Part of our role as creative people is to point to Art when and wherever we find it. It's not always a safe or easy thing to do. But its a heartlifting.
I always appreciate your perspective, Tamsin. You have a way of tuning into the quiet stories that linger in ordinary things, and your writing makes me want to look closer at the world around me. Reading your thoughts on Sarah’s work and your search for art that truly connects is a gentle reminder that meaning lives in the little details. Thank you for sharing your insights and helping us see beauty in new places.
"I was going to start looking more closely at the art that flowed through people’s lives."
Thankyou for this Tamsin.
Your instincts are so right about this. Part of our role as creative people is to point to Art when and wherever we find it. It's not always a safe or easy thing to do. But its a heartlifting.
I always appreciate your perspective, Tamsin. You have a way of tuning into the quiet stories that linger in ordinary things, and your writing makes me want to look closer at the world around me. Reading your thoughts on Sarah’s work and your search for art that truly connects is a gentle reminder that meaning lives in the little details. Thank you for sharing your insights and helping us see beauty in new places.