Scottish artist, Judith Bridgland, is considered a rising star in the art world. She is best known for creating dramatic and bold landscapes using expressive colour.
Judith Bridgland’s paintings are ideal for collectors that like landscape and nature prints with a pop of colour and contemporary influences.
Judith has built her life in art around the close observation of landscape and nature, and has travelled around the UK for many years. In 2020 however, circumstances dictated a new way of working and she became more focused on the passing of the seasons and the minutiae of daily changes to her surroundings.
Inspiration came from re-exploring the territory closer to home – her garden, local parkland, favourite familiar walks – and although she has now joyfully returned to her former way of working and expanded her horizons, she believes that this period in her life has made her work more meaningful and poignant.
Judith’s latest work is an exuberant celebration of the Scottish landscape, from the Campsie Fells and Ben Lomond which she can see from her own home, across to East Lothian and North Berwick, through the farmland of Ayrshire and the mountains of Argyll on the west, and up to the islands of Skye and Harris via the ‘Road to the Isles’. Every painting tells a story of a single moment, of what it was like to be there on a particular day at a particular time.
Judith takes hundreds of photographs out on location as reference material. Then back in the studio she uses the tactile, textural qualities of the oils to build up the painting, using a wide variety of impasto mark-making to give a sense of the energy and vitality of the landscape. Her palette is vibrant and expressive, and although they are based on the reality that she has observed, each piece represents a deeply felt emotional response to nature, landscape and light.
Born in Australia Judith has lived in Scotland since 1965 and now describes herself as a Scottish painter. She has held successful solo and group exhibitions for many years, first in Scotland but then moving on to Europe, Russia and the USA and she has undertaken commissions and sold work to clients including the Royal Bank of Scotland, British Midland, Glasgow Caledonian University and the University of Strathclyde.
Judith has won a variety of awards including the MacRoberts Open Prize and the Glasgow Art Club Award, Paisley Art Institute and has paintings in private collections all over the world. In 2020 she was one half of a two-person show with Roseanne Barr and Directors’ Choice, Walker Galleries, Harrogate, as well as exhibiting a video installation at the 2019 Venice Biennale.
