About the artist

In 1968 Edinburgh born Mary Shaw (1945) moved with her husband to rural Aberdeenshire. After finishing her training at Gray's School of Art in Aberdeen she worked as a Teacher of Art & Design in Peterhead Academy, retiring as Head of Department in 2004.

Although she has spent considerable time travelling in Europe, it is a love of the Scottish landscape, from the rolling Border hills to the haunting charm of Sutherland's lochs and isolated beaches, that continually inspires her artistic imagination.

In her work, she reflects the particular qualities of Scotland's landscape that make it so unique, the fleeting qualities of light, the expansive skies and changing weather patterns (that can make painting outdoors so challenging).

Her latest paintings take a closer look at seasonal changes in both the rural and coastal areas that surround her Buchan croft.

They concentrate on the effects of the farming year on her immediate environment and capturing the atmospheric effects of changing weather on the tiny coastal villages that cling precariously to their strips of land between cliff and sea.