Introducing the Artists

Fraser MacDonald is a visual artist based in South Ayrshire. His work is a distillation of thoughts and feelings that reoccur and often relate to an individual or a place of importance to himself.

‘My Interest in everything leads me to create work concerned with anything’

The artworks he makes are composites of real and imagined conversations or experiences and are embedded with enough omitted phrases and conversations to fill a novel (with pictures), which is why he considers words and images of equal consequence. Fraser makes work about things that he likes or that interest him, usually from the point of view of a disorientated spectator rather than a zealous participant. He has never had the interest to become prolific at a particular method of working, preferring to approach making work in much the same way as eating, which Fraser sees as having some consistencies whether they are staples, occasions or rarities, for example drawing slash porridge, printmaking slash scallops, bronze casting slash Asiago cheese trugole. Fraser wrote a book called Plastic Chairs in 2016 and an artist friend who proof-read it said it contained a reference to food on every page.

Amy Benzie is a ceramic maker and creative facilitator based in Aberdeen City. She holds a BA in Ceramics and Glass from Gray’s School of Art and is Co-Director of Aberdeen Ceramics Studio.

Amy’s curiosity lies in the alchemy of glaze recipes and firing. The element of unpredictability that comes from working with her materials, and the exchanges between art and science, greatly inspire the otherworldly forms and textures of her work. This has led to innovative and unorthodox methods of pattern application, for which she was awarded the Potclays Graduate Award.

Amy’s work includes a collection of otherworldly vessels – ‘The FrankenBodies’ – which were exhibited as part of the Haddo Arts Festival. These pieces are a development of the ‘Fertility Vessels’ produced as part of a residency at The Pheasantry in 2018.

Rachel Jack is a singer-songwriter from Fraserburgh. Rachel made the decision to leave her previous corporate career and apply herself to her singing and songwriting when she received the Paulo Nutini scholarship and studied music at the University West of Scotland. 

Rachel has generated success through EPs such as Magazine Girls. Her music takes inspiration from everyday people and their stories and many of her songs are conversations she has had with others. Rachel is passionate about music and for her, it is a liberating process.

Yvette regularly collaborates or works collectively with other creative practitioners. She works in a variety of forms, mainly sculptural, as well as text-based works, photography, sound and video. Yvette’s practise looks at the lifecycles and networks of objects and materials, and their traces within environments.

Yvette is a co-founder and member of Tendency Towards, an artist and curatorial collective that create and organise events and exhibitions.

In addition to her role as Writer in Residence at Roxburghe House, Emily teaches creative writing at North East Scotland College and regularly facilitates workshops in the city. She is the lead practitioner on Creative Scotland funded ‘Creative Comforts’ project, which aims to inspire comfort and improve wellbeing for NHS Grampian staff through art and writing. She is an Honorary Fellow of the WORD Centre for Creative Writing and a founding member of the Aberdeen Writers Studio.

Sally Thomson studied Fine Art at Humberside University, while studying she decided to specialise in feltmaking. The artwork seen here, ‘Nepalese Window’, was created as part of Konya to Carlisle: Corridors of Felt staged in the main gallery of Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery in Carlisle. The exhibition was the culmination of a yearlong post as ‘Cumbrian Crafts Resident’.

Sally spent time learning traditional felting methods from Turkish master felters in Konya, home of the whirling dervishes, that taught Sally the skills needed to make felts on a large scale. The imagery for the works was harvested from travels over the five years prior to the residency.

‘Nepalese Window’ has patterns from across the world framed in a decorative Nepalese style window frame. Sally walked the foothills of Nepal and was intrigued by the incredible window decoration in the vernacular housing, which informed the imagery of her felt works.

The felting methods learnt in Turkey enabled her to work with community groups to make large community felts in a single day which led to her roles in the third sector, working closely with the public and the benefits of art and creativity.