Somewhere, somehow, someone is gazing at the skies in wonder. The way in which they perceive the world changes, filtered through soft light and ethereal cloud. For some, there is an element of otherness, a different kind of perception or destination. Trina Bowen and Gail Olding take you on a journey beyond the familiar, transporting you to otherworldly landscapes and ethereal realms, inviting you to see the world through different eyes and discover the beauty that lies beyond our everyday skies. In this Artist Talk, both creators share their insights and inspirations.
Summary
In this gallery talk at Graystone Gallery, New Zealand-born artist Trina Bowen shares her artistic journey across multiple countries and disciplines. The event features Trina and Gail Olding in conversation, with Trina presenting first.
Beginning with a degree in glass design from Canterbury, New Zealand, Trina's career took her to Papua New Guinea where she worked in advertising, adapting European campaigns for developing markets.
In Indonesia, where she lived for approximately 12 years across different regions including Sumatra, Kalimantan, and Java, Trina initially exhibited small works before being commissioned to design ceramics that would "look Western for the Asian eye and look Asian for the Western eye." She later moved into children's book illustration, creating works for publishers in Singapore and Jakarta.
A significant influence on her work came from Indonesian temples, where the atmosphere of incense, candles, and smoke inspired her to move beyond graphic design into illustration that captured mood and mystery. In Indonesia, she proudly became part of a women's artist group that grew to include political commentary, particularly focusing on violence against women.
After Indonesia, Trina relocated to Bangladesh, following her husband's work. There, she developed a unique project painting street traders, paying them their daily wage to sit for portraits. This culminated in an exhibition supported by Standard Chartered Bank and the EU Commission, with a portion of sales going back to her subjects.
After ten years of traveling, Trina and her husband chose to settle in Edinburgh, Scotland, where she has lived for nearly a decade. In Scotland, her work shifted to focus on landscapes, particularly capturing the fleeting light through clouds over lochs and hills. Her technique involves taking thousands of photographs and making color notes in sketchbooks, then creating large oil paintings in her studio using transparent layers of washes—a technique influenced by her background in watercolors.
Her current work is influenced by the changing seasons of Scotland, with particular attention to the autumn and spring colors. She mentions literary influences including John Ruskin's writings on skies, Robert Burns' descriptions of Scottish landscapes, and Percy Shelley's poetry. Trina enjoys working on large canvases, limited only by what can fit through her studio door, and typically spends about three months on a painting, building up layers and allowing drying time between applications.
TRANSCRIPT
Thanks for coming. Good to see you all here tonight. I'd like to introduce the Graystone Gallery staff. I'm Lesley Briggs, curator and founder of the gallery.
With me tonight I have one glamorous assistant, Mark.
My husband was expected to be here tonight but unfortunately he's ill. So please be kind to us.
We have two excellent artists in conversation for you tonight and I couldn't be more pleased. Ladies and gentlemen, Trina Bowen and Gail Olding. Trina will be explaining about her art and her influences and there'll be questions after.
And then after the break we'll have Gail doing the same. So please welcome Trina.
Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here tonight.
First and foremost I should tell you I'm just getting over a cold so if I snuff a little bit, I'm struggling with my lozenges here. Most importantly, I'd like to welcome Gail to Edinburgh from London. Thank you for coming all this way. I know what it's like. I did an exhibition in London two years ago. I understand everything you've just experienced, and you've got the festival to compete with up here as well. So thank you for making it.
I also have to say that I think your paintings are a credit to this gallery. The gallery of course is lovely and it's a credit to Lesley, Rob and Mark for all the work they've done putting up the exhibition and painting the walls, but your work looks fabulous. Thank you. That's just yours.
Okay, so I didn't quite know what this Q&A should look like. I could do a discussion about the interaction of colour by Joseph Albers, you know, the tome is well worth exploring. We've got some long winters ahead, but we won't do that. Instead, I'm going to tell you about myself.
I'm a New Zealander, and I worked in graphic design. My degree took me into glass design in Christchurch Canterbury, New Zealand. After that, adventures took me to Papua New Guinea where I worked in advertising during the very early days. We transformed advertising from European countries to make it work for developing countries. These would be products everybody knows about for baby care and so forth. I had the time of my life. Papua New Guinea in those days was utterly fabulous.
Making advertising and small movies was just brilliant. I thought it was great. But life moves on and I went to Indonesia with my husband who was working for various companies there.
I started off small, doing exhibitions in Jakarta. Soon after some of these exhibitions, I found that I had a lot of small commercial people looking at and following what I was doing. One of them was a ceramic design company who worked in Java. Their brief was: "I would like you to design ceramics that look Western for the Asian eye and look Asian for the Western eye." When I first came back here, sometimes I could see my designs, particularly in the Netherlands because many of the companies working there were Dutch in those days.
That was fun. After that, I went into children's book illustration. I did two children's books: "The Balinese Children's Favourite Stories" and "A Club of Small Men" for a company in Singapore that was also working in Jakarta.
I discovered that the big temples in Bali were full of atmosphere—the incense, the candles, and so forth. This drew me out of my graphic design into something new: learning to illustrate and trying to capture the atmosphere, the smoke, the mystery of Balinese temples. Walking around and discovering these temples was fabulous as you can imagine.
Back home in Jakarta there were Chinese temples, which are completely different. Their gods are right there beside the big red candles that stand this tall, and if you leave the right present, the favors will be given to you. These huge temples threaded throughout Java changed in each city, with ancient influences showing up differently depending on which city you visited.
I used to come from the smell of incense and get to work. This was all for exhibitions. I lived with my husband in Sumatra, Kalimantan, and Java. I was there a long time, about 12 years, and my language improved as time went on.
I came upon an established women's artist group. As they grew in stature, they also grew in political commentary, which was no small feat given Indonesia's political climate in those days. I'm proud to say I became part of the group. Much of the work focused on violence against women, which became a thread I followed throughout the rest of my life. Working with these Indonesian women was illuminating, and they were incredibly generous to me as they pushed me along my artistic journey.
After my 12 years there, we moved to Bangladesh, once again following my husband's work. Every time I moved to a new country, I had to set up and start work for myself all over again. While others who moved with aid organizations would typically find their footing quickly, I seemed to restart completely in each country.
Bangladesh was fascinating from an outsider's perspective. There was an entire aid sector dealing with many groups focused on children, poverty, medical care, water, fish—all aspects of helping Bangladesh improve. The upper echelon consisted of very wealthy people who moved between Dhaka, London, and all over the world—a fairly urban, well-educated group. I met both sets of people, and the Bangladeshi expatriates at this level were great art buyers. Everyone made space for a person like me. I was fascinated by what happened between the aid organizations and the extremely wealthy who took care of themselves. The aid groups were supporting people in dire circumstances, but there was also growth happening in Bangladesh at that time.
I became particularly interested in the street traders who sold everything. They came to your door selling little birds, socks, incense—absolutely everything. Speaking with them, I realized they were almost a product of successful aid work. They were the new entrepreneurs who saw themselves running small businesses. There were a couple of clever bankers who had started giving microloans to small business people.
I decided that my way forward would be to ask these traders if they would come and sit for me while I painted them. Whatever they earned per day, I would pay them to sit for their portrait. As we painted and talked, I learned more about their lives.
There was a lovely girl called Liemie who was part of the exhibition. She told me about her life expectations. At 18 years old, she had spent the entire year being groomed for marriage and had met her husband-to-be. She was excited about being married in the next three or four months. I met her after she'd married as well. She was a delight.
I also met the man who sold me birds, but most memorable was a man called Amol. He was a very elderly gentleman, Muslim, who had experienced terrible tragedy. He had a wife and three children and cut rice for a living. While he was away one day, his house burned down, killing his wife and three children. After that, he said he didn't belong to this world anymore but would wander and try to do good. He had come all the way to Dhaka and lived in the main mosque, which provided shelter for homeless people—half for women and half for men at night. During the day, he would walk looking for money. He sat for me to be painted, and I think he was a lovely man. The interesting thing was that many people spoke excellent English, so he was able to tell me about his life and how he saw his world and future.
Another person I painted was a flower seller. She had "no hope" of getting married because she was "too old" at 20, so she sold flowers. She sat for me twice.
After completing about 27-30 large paintings, I decided to have an exhibition. I was talking with someone from the embassy about my work, and soon Standard Chartered Bank and the EU Commission arranged for a publisher to create a book of my exhibition, with proceeds going back to the community.
I told all my subjects that if I sold their painting, I would give them 15% of the sales, and I invited them to the exhibition. They had a wonderful time, and all the paintings sold except for one—nobody wanted the young Mullah portrait. So if anyone wants a young Mullah painting, I still have one at home. After that experience, we had a discussion about having reached the end of our journey through the developing world. We needed to decide where we would settle permanently. Ten years isn't a long time, but we finally made our decision, and here I am in Scotland. I chose Edinburgh. My husband, Graeme, is from Aberdeen, so we came here for family. We traveled back and forth for a while as I had to choose somewhere to live.
Edinburgh captured my heart. I think it's one of the best small cities in the entire world, and I'm really lucky to be here. I've been here almost ten years and have enjoyed every moment of it, except for some of the summers, but we won't discuss that.
Let me talk about my current work. This artist statement was written some time ago, and I think it's an amalgamation of things I've said that were written on my behalf. I believe it captures what I would want to express to you all.
"While travelling through an often wet and wild Scottish landscape, I am captivated by the glimpses of light piercing through the clouds and dancing off the misty corners of lochs and hills. The light is fleeting but at the same time uplifting, momentary and yet timeless. I was inspired to try to capture these ethereal moments.
It's impossible to work outdoors to capture this phenomenon. So I spend days with eyes watching, soaking up the vistas, taking thousands of photographs. I bring a sketchbook with me and use it for color notes as the seasons change. The colors of the land are reflected back into the clouds in an interactive play of sky, land and water. The clouds provide a reflective surface which photographs often don't capture."
I've also followed the changing seasons. The bright oranges in my paintings often represent autumn and spring as they transition. Anyone who has lived in this part of the world or in Edinburgh knows that as the sun hangs low, the colors and vistas become a bright orange. It's beautiful.
Back in my studio with all my notebooks, I work with oil paints on large canvases—the bigger the better. My only restriction is getting the work through doors or sometimes into lifts. The larger the canvas, the better to capture the awesome vistas. Practicalities of space are my only limit. I paint in oils for permanence, but my technique has been built on a lifetime of experience with watercolors, which has enabled me to develop an oil technique using transparent layers of washes that build up color, adding luminescence and transparency to my paintings.
For a long time, I also did commissions and have had some fabulous opportunities. For one memorable commission, the client owned a house in New Town with a large cupola at the top—a huge one with almost mezzanine circular floors. He told me, "I work in London, but I wish I could stay in Edinburgh all the time. I want a painting up there, and my only brief to you is 'hope.'" So simple, right?
He added, "I want to walk out here on Monday morning, look at the painting, go to London for the week, come back and look at it again. I want it to give me a smile in my heart." So I painted him a huge, bright orange sunrise. We barely got it through the door and up the stairs, and it took ages to hang. I wasn't present for the installation as I was working through galleries by then.
I rarely meet my clients directly these days, and working through galleries has been one of the best changes I've made. The galleries I work with have been fabulous for me.
During lockdown, I received many commissions. People would call and say, "I know you're not doing anything for the next year, but we've been thinking about this painting." They would send me a copy of something I'd done previously, saying it was part of a series they liked. So I kept painting throughout lockdown, making it a really busy time for me.
That's my story. I'll finish by mentioning some of my influences. I don't know if anyone is familiar with John Ruskin, an English writer who writes about skies in a way that almost no one else does. He talks about how we as people relate to skies. Along with Ruskin, there's the poet Robbie Burns, who writes beautifully about the landscape and skies of Scotland. And Percy Shelley—I use this as an example—wrote "The Cloud," describing "the sanguine sunrise with its meteor eyes." That's your homework to explore.
I would like to close by saying: if you see my work as I see it, I will have achieved much in my art. Thank you.
Thank you. Good. Does anyone have questions for Trina?
Yes. So everywhere you've lived over the years, your style has changed. It sounds like you began with graphic design, moved to portraiture when in Bangladesh, and now focus on Scottish skies. Is there a reason behind these changes, or is it just what fitted your environment at the time?
I think what happens is, like most artists, you gather information as you move along in your world. You pick up things, you drop things—ideas and thoughts evolve.
My graphic design background, which I'm still attracted to, gave me a foundation with hard edges. If I see a good design on a box or can, I still appreciate it.
When I talked about the temples and their ethereal smoke, that was a different influence. Bali is a very beautiful, spiritual place. The temples are filled with incense, candles, and fire. The whole atmosphere is one of smoke, and I taught myself to capture that feeling of being in the temple. I've carried that sensibility with me.
My graphic design background gives me a sense of design structure. My paintings are designed before I start—my notebooks are filled with the correct design before I begin painting, since it's not meant to be corrected later. As I've gotten older, I've accumulated a wealth of background knowledge through my experiences. was working now through galleries.
I bet it's very rare, my clients and this is one of the best things I've done for a long time. I should say the galleries that I work with have been fabulous with me for me.
And I have had many commissions. I found during lockdown a lot of people called me and said, "I know you're not doing anything for the next year, but we've been thinking about this painting, right?"
I liked this one, so they sent me a copy of it, and oh, it's part of a series. And so during lockdown, I actually painted away. And so my lockdown was busy, really busy.
So that is a little story about me. I'll probably finish up by saying some of my influences is, well, I don't know if anybody knows John Ruskin, he's an English writer, okay? And he writes about skies, in a way that almost no one else would about skies. And he talks about us as people relating to skies. And of course, along with John Ruskin, we have the poet Robbie Burns who talks fabulously about the landscape and the skies of Scotland. Along with Percy Shelley, I just use this as an example, he wrote "The Cloud" and he writes about the sanguine sunrise with its meteor eyes. And so that's your homework; you can get going with that.
So I would like to close and say if you see my work as I see it, I will have achieved, I will have achieved much in my work. Thank you.
Thank you. Good. Do any of you have any questions for Trina? Yes. So everywhere that we've lived over the years, your styles changed then obviously because very much to me it sounds like you've been in graphic design and then portraiture when you were in Bangladesh more and then Scotland skies. Is there do you think there's a reason behind it or is it just what at the time fitted your environment?
I think what happens is like most artists you gather information as you move along in your world, you pick up things, you drop things, ideas, thoughts and so forth.
I my world in a graphic design world which I'm still attracted to. If I see a design on a small box or a can, oh gosh that's good. So I'm still there, but it has hard edges, okay?
So when I talked about the temples and their kind of ethereal, smokes, the just anyone been to Bali? No? Okay. It's a very, very beautiful place, very spiritual place too I might add. And so the temples are filled with incense and and candles, fire. So the the whole thing is one of smoke and so I learned to to try and or I taught myself to try and capture that feeling of being in the temple. So I've carried that with me as well. My graphic design gives me a sense of design, so my paintings are actually designed when I when my my notebooks actually are filled up with the design that's correct before I start painting because it's not about to be corrected. So I think, just between you and me I've got a little older, I think I've got quite a bit of background knowledge as I've come along with my life.
Yes. I do. I think even today, even now, I look at other people's work, I'm on social media and I think, you know, gosh I I've forgotten how gorgeous those greens are. I don't paint them green. So I give it a shot because I'm in lockdown, so I did some little paintings in green. So I I think most artists are like it, you're just perpetually moving along.
Yes. You use thirds, don't you? Yes, we do. Yes, you do. Yeah, yeah. Yes, lovely. Yes. Yeah. I could call. I could call. Where you from? Edinburgh. Okay. In fact all your pictures have seascapes, so where do you find where best skies is it over the sea or do you find them sort of in the Highland, you know, that?
My first exhibition, came from Graham took me. He said, well, if we're going to sell them, well, then you should understand what Scotland looks like. So we went traveling. Went right up to Betty Hill to Land's End, went in through all those big peat lands and so forth. And part of that, on that particular occasion was the skies were thunderous and torrential. So mostly I was out of the car lying on the peat taking all these photographs of the skies and so forth. And so my first exhibition, believe it or not, was over the southern peat lands with big skies.
And believe it or not, I sold all of the paintings to mostly to people in Scotland who said I know where you are, right? And believe it or not they were painting them in their house. I was quite impressed by that.
The skies come and go, of course, you know, in the Western Isles, during the change of seasons, that's taking out over the sea. But then I have a great fondness for bogs, mud, and so the underfoot as well. I think the best it's hard to say, but when the skies are right, no matter if they're over the sea or over the land, the reflections that come down into the land, that pick up the water, a spectacular if they're over the water. So I really can't answer your question, except that every single, yeah, so it's it's as if you're ago is seasonal, yeah?
The second exhibition I did was I was greatly intrigued by all of the beautiful the grasslands, the heather, and I came to understand once we started on all of this, of course, you like some of the berries down and then you go and find out that all the actual heather is seasonal and it changes color and so forth. So I I like that.
And so my paintings then, the foregrounds all represented some of the seasonal colors showing. Yeah. You've done the both. Sorry? Underfoot. Yes.
What is the largest size you've done? As I said, I have to get out the door. It was a 3.2. Yeah, that was that oh yes. No, no, that was the height of it and then it was like four something. Yeah.
And I have a wall. I love doing that. That's been great.
Yeah. And I'll let you take your 90 dollar questions. How long does it take if it's if it's actually if we're in a good we're if we're both if the candles and iron and a good place, right? Three months maybe as a I put a I put a load of paint on, right? And then a lot of the times I wait for it to dry before I go back in. And if I'm putting on transparent colors as well, I'm building up all the time. But if we're falling out, it spends its life with its face to the wall until we start speaking again. It could be another couple of months before I look at it because if you turn it around and look at it, you might think why actually you were right actually.
Yeah. Yeah. It was me, it was my fault. We'll get along fine now. Yeah. Do you have a lot of rejects, which is like you started a project and you don't like it, you just toss it?
Never. Never. I never get a finished. Even if I do start again, it's I'm using the same canvas. Of course, yeah, of course there's stops and starts. There are some where I think the color and I aren't getting along or I've got oh it's the end of a series and I feel like I've worked it through and I was wrong to push it for one more painting because what's happening is I'm already thinking about the next what next series that I'm doing. I've been somewhere else and like a magpie picked up a new idea. And so if your heart's not in it,
Yeah. So you have more than one on the go, if you do that. Yeah. Several on the go. So if something actually takes my fancy like Belgon poems, this is one of them. I did about four or five of them, they're all different sizes and I wanted to work through an idea. I fell in love with the poems, I loved the idea of them, but I wasn't sure they were actually going to capture exactly what I wanted to. So the bigger ones I worked together, yes.
Are they all at different times of the day because they all look such crepuscular light that you know that it's the gloaming. Yes. But is that just Scotland? Yes. That's just me.
Thank you. Good point. Yeah. There is my oldest sky up there. Yeah. And the worst thing that can happen to me is the middle of winter because it goes pale blue. The sky is just pale blue for days on end, you know. It's like, okay, come on, you're being boring. Move on.
You must have to wait because as I came up on the train today, it was just grey. Yeah. There was no definition at all. No. At all. Talk about flat.
Really flat, yeah.
Okay. Do you teach? No. I did not teach.
I run a configurative drawing group in the city. It's I'm the person that puts it together and runs it. It's for already established artists. But if anybody was interested in painting, I know a few people who do actually teach and they teach many, many subjects as well. Okay. Yeah.
Thank you, Trina. Can I ask, do you paint the edges? Yes, I do.
Is that with tape or not? No, it's not.
I know there's two schools of thought here. One is leave them white and the other is leave them dark. For a big painting like that one up there.
Yeah. I like that it's dark because it actually has a nice clean edge to it. And also people who are kind of wondering whether or not to frame, it gives them a starting point, you see? That's where the painting actually ends.
I agree. I do the same. I do black.
Yes. All right. Yeah.
Okay, thank you, Trina. I have one question. How did you develop your unique technique?
My joys. Okay. Trial and error. The countries that I've lived in don't necessarily have the best kind of well, let's put it that they have less of brand names than what you find in Europe. So I started there. I would say that coming here, when I did come here we belonged to the EU and the world was my oyster. To be perfectly honest, that came to paints from Europe and Britain and so forth. How do I develop my technique?
A lot of it is if you look at my drawer, I look at my paintings, you see that they are structured and that comes from graphic design.
The other part of it is just experimenting, painting until I feel something is working for me. I don't normally paint for example foliage, but during lockdown I quite got into it. There was a in the garden close by, there was a big heart that came in and the whole thing became just this misty ethereal thing that just drifted over all of the greenery and there was something called a cliff scape rose that fell down from oh it's way up but I believe it's a rambler, way up there. So you wouldn't know it's a cliff scape rose by a million years. It's just a little whiteness in the dark greens and then the mist coming through it. And I taught myself that whilst I was in lockdown. So trial and error, I think.
I read furiously, I'm online, anybody that has actually understood how far we've come for for learning or teaching yourself anything, right? All you have to do is go online to understand everybody in my world has an opinion about the best thing, best way to go and do it. There's also a mile of information on referencing as well, who's a good teacher, who's not, whose work's good to look at, who's generous with their ideas and tips and so forth. It's a great world for most part.
Okay, well, thank you, Trina.
