Throughout her long and varied career, Winifred Nicholson (1893-1981) was concerned with light, colour and radiance. Best known for her sensitive and joyful flower paintings, she married Ben Nicholson in 1920 and their mutually influential artistic relationship lasted, despite separation, until Winifred's death. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, she made regular working trips to Scotland, often accompanied by the poet, Kathleen Raine. Frequently staying on the islands of Eigg and Canna and in Sandaig on the mainland, Winifred felt a deep affinity with the Scottish landscape and marvelled at the quality of light and the effects created by the ever-changing weather conditions. Her last painting expedition was to Eigg in 1980. Winifred Nicholson in Scotland is based on personal correspondence and the recollections of relatives, friends and painting companions. The book examines Winifred Nicholson's love for Scotland and illustrates her Scottish paintings. REVIEWS: "Nicholson's Scottish paintings encapsulate her concerns with light, radiance and harmony which she expressed through flowers and the lyricism of the natural landscape." - -The Independent 20 colour illustrations

This new publication explores the whole career of Winifred Nicholson with a special emphasis on her theories of colour. Using specific paintings to examine her ideas and writings about colour the book includes her late 'prismatic' pictures which have never been properly explained. Throughout her life Winifred Nicholson was interested in prisms and rainbows, but when she was given some prisms by a physicist friend in the mid 1970s her painting took on a new direction. Looking through a prism she saw objects with a rim of prismatic colour, and explored and developed these ideas, often painting pictures that verged on the abstract. Nicholson's 'prismatic' pictures were a culmination of her life's search to find "form's secret and rhythmic law". She painted them in Greece in 1979, at her home in Cumbria, and during her last painting trip to the Island of Eigg in the Hebrides in 1980, where she had an inspired period of painting and made some of her best loved pictures.Published on the occasion of the exhibition 'Liberation of Colour' at mima, Middlesbrough Institute of Modern art, the book illustrates many previously unseen paintings from private collections, as well as some of Nicholson's best known works, and draws on new research, including previously unseen archival material.

This book brings together some of Nicholson's most eloquent essays with extracts from previously unpublished letters between the artist and Ede, and the words of their mutual friends, the poet Kathleen Raine and collector Helen Sutherland. With an introduction by Kettle's Yard curator Elizabeth Fisher exploring Nicholson's relationship with Ede, the book is richly illustrated and includes reproductions of all works in the collection, a biography and bibliography.

Joan Eardley (1921-63) is considered to be one of the most influential Scottish painters of her generation. Her paintings and drawings reflect urban and rural Scotland in an expressive visual language unlike any other artist's. This new, highly illustrated survey of her painting does renewed justice to the range, scale and power of her work.

This book examines the artistic partnership of Ben Nicholson and Winifred Nicholson in the 1920s and their friendship and collaboration with Christopher Wood, Alfred Wallis, and the potter William Staite Murray. Inspired by each other, the Nicholsons experimented furiously and often painted the same subject, one as a colorist the other more interested in form. Winifred wrote of her time with Ben, 'All artists are unique and can only unite as complementaries not as similarities'. New research based on previously unpublished letters, photographs and other material draws out their fascinating connections. All the works, many of which are previously unpublished, are illustrated in full color, each with comments relating to the work by the artists and their critics.

This volume weaves together the Scottish otter stories from Gavin Maxwell's three non-fiction books, Ring of Bright Water (1960), The Rocks Remain (1963), and Raven Meet Thy Brother (1969). Maxwell was both an extraordinarily evocative writer and a highly unusual man. While touring the Iraqi marshes, he was captivated by an otter and became a devoted advocate of and spokesman for the species. He moved to a remote house in the Scottish highlands, co-habiting there with three otters and living an idyllic and isolated life – at least for a while. Fate, fame, and fire conspired against this paradise, and it, too, came to an end, though the journey was filled with incident and wonder. Maxwell was also talented as an artist, and his sinuous line drawings of these amphibious and engaging creatures, and the homes they occupied, illustrate his story. This book stands as a lasting tribute to a man, his work, and his passion. It was received and has endured as a classic for its portrait not only of otters but also of a man who endured heartaches and disappointments, whose life embodied both greatness and tragedy. He writes with rare eloquence about his birth, his devotion to the beloved Scottish highlands, and the wildlife he loved, while refusing to ignore the darker aspects of his nature and of nature in its larger sense.