The Whitehouse Gallery opens the door for its annual Summer Exhibition for 2010.  The exhibition begins on Saturday 3^rd July and runs right through to Saturday 4th September.

With the ‘Glasgow Girls’ opening at Kirkcudbright Town Hall on the same day, the town is certainly placing itself firmly on the art map. The Preview opening will take place from 11am onwards on Saturday 3^rd July, with bubbly and chocolates on offer to anyone wishing to attend. It is an open event to everyone, and is free.

As always, the Summer Exhibition is the opportunity for art lovers to see up and coming local artists work next to big names in the Scottish art world. This exhibition promises to have something for everyone, with a selection of quality Fine Art and Craft on show.

Dame Elizabeth Blackadder DBE, RA, RSA is without doubt the biggest name in the exhibition, being one of the most honoured Scottish artists of her generation. The Whitehouse Gallery is thrilled to be showing six of her limited edition etchings, which include examples of her still life’s, flower and cat studies, as well as work influenced by her trips to the Far East.

Brenda Lenaghan RSW is another well known artist whose work is greatly inspired by her travels abroad, particularly her recent work which is influenced by trips to visit her son who lives in Japan. Her figurative and still life paintings are extraordinary, with the exquisite palette of rich colours and the other-worldly subject matter transporting you to another time and place. Likewise, Japanese symbolism features in Jean Hall’s work, with a deep interest in the idea of inner self sometimes literally represented by a lotus flower, or Buddha, or single mediating person.

Flowers are the subject for Edinburgh-based Catriona Mann RSW , who won The Whitehouse Gallery Award in 2009 in conjuction with the Paisley Scottish Drawing Competition. Catriona exhibits annually in many group exhibitions throughout Scotland, including RSA, RSW and VAS exhibitions, and has won numerous awards for her work.

Flowers are also favoured by gallery regular Victor Henderson, who prefers to paint in watercolour. Victor enjoys exploring a range of subject matter other than flowers in his paintings, including still-life’s and differing styles of landscapes. Fiona Millar is also becoming well known for her distinctive still-life and landscape paintings, and is easily of the gallery’s most popular artists to date.

Whitehouse Gallery favourite Liz Mackay will be showing a selection of her landscape and still life paintings. A stylized table is a recurring theme in Liz’s work, using the picture frame as theatre, table as stage and the objects as the cast. With landscape, Liz usually uses heightened colour and tonal changes to celebrate the initial inspiration. James Fraser, another gallery regular, is also exhibiting a selection of his colourful mixed media pieces.

New exhibitor to the gallery Alec Galloway’s main area of activity is glass making, but is equally at home in the painting studio. After becoming one of the Aspect Painting Prize finalists in 2009, Alec has decided to develop this path more seriously. His paintings are mainly in the tradition of landscape, and are inspired by a wide range of interests, in particular Scottish history and sense of place. There will also be landscape paintings in the exhibition by local artist Stewart Lammie, who likes to depict local scenes.

Local artist John Halliday has also joined the list of exhibiting artists for the Summer Show, with a couple of his landscape paintings. Since his early exhibiting days in Scotland in the 1970s, Halliday has built up a loyal and discerning following, having received numerous private and public commissions for paintings and mural work.  His work has been exhibited in major British and European cities.

Finally, the wonderful Catherine Rayner will have some of her extremely popular silkscreen prints on show, depicting animals brimming with character and humour.

To compliment the Fine Art, there will also be a varied selection of Applied Art & Craft, including jewellery by designers Sheana M Stephen and Jessica Buchanan, and new sculpture pieces by John Lockwood & Shirley Vauvelle.