Victoria captures energy through playful mark-making and enjoys the serendipity that occurs as a result.
Victoria Wylie is a contemporary Scottish artist whose abstract landscape paintings capture the energy and atmosphere of Scotland's natural environments. Working from her home studio in Angus, she creates bold, striking compositions that explore the elemental qualities of land, sea, and sky.
Educational Foundation
Victoria's artistic journey began at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, University of Dundee, where she graduated in 1997 with a BDes (Hons) in Constructed Textiles, specialising in Gobelin tapestry weaving. This foundation in constructed textiles—with its emphasis on layering, texture, and color relationships—continues to influence her approach to painting. She furthered her artistic development by completing a Master of Fine Art in 2003, deepening her conceptual and technical understanding.
Victoria Wylie's Artistic Philosophy
At the heart of Victoria's practice lies a profound connection with and respect for the natural world. Her paintings serve as visual celebrations of Scotland's wilderness, capturing solitary moments of immersion in nature. She describes her work as "memories of these moments": reflections from particular places that encompass numerous experiences, with each painting lending a fragment of itself to the next.
Inspiration and Process
Victoria's fascination with horizon lines stems from her childhood growing up close to the North Yorkshire Moors, where vast stretches of openness made lasting impressions on her visual sensibility. This formative experience continues to inform her compositions, which explore the visual tensions and relationships that emerge where sky meets sea meets land.
Her paintings respond directly to the changing elements and rhythms of the Scottish landscape. Through bold mark-making and atmospheric color relationships, Victoria captures the energy and movement of natural environments. She embraces playful mark-making techniques and welcomes the serendipitous moments that occur during the painting process, allowing spontaneity to contribute to the final work.
Technique and Aesthetic
Victoria's work is characterized by its boldness and atmospheric quality. Her approach combines structured composition—informed by her textile design background—with expressive, energetic mark-making that captures the dynamic qualities of natural environments. The resulting paintings balance control and spontaneity, creating works that evoke both specific places and universal emotional responses to landscape.
Professional Practice
Beyond her studio practice as a fine artist, Victoria has built an extensive career across the creative sector spanning over 25 years. She has worked in education, project coordination, and design, including roles at the University of Dundee's Visual Research Centre and as a Freelance Designer with the Learning Team at V&A Dundee since its opening in 2018. In 2015, she launched EXPLORE PLAY CREATE, offering creative workshops for children and adults that encourage curiosity across design thinking, fine art processes, and craft making.
Exhibition and Recognition
Victoria has exhibited her paintings throughout Scotland and across the UK, with her work finding homes in private collections internationally. Her ability to translate personal experiences of nature into universal visual language has resonated with collectors who appreciate both the emotional depth and aesthetic strength of her contemporary approach to landscape painting.
View all Victoria Wylie art for sale