Artist’s ‘light-hearted’ paintings inspired by Dawyck Botanic Garden

Alison Gardner, 56, who lives in West Linton, has worked at the botanic garden for five years.

She had previously run three of her own art retail outlets in Edinburgh and spent years illustrating exclusive wedding stationery.

Alison’s first show, at Dawyck’s studio, is split into two distinct halves.

One part features Scottish building illustrations, created for wedding invitations.

The other is up to the moment works of the botanic garden, painted this year, featuring comic reproductions of squirrels, frogs and hares.

Alison, whose commercial journey in art started aged 19 with a market stall, said: “Art has always been at the core of everything I have done.

“When I left St Dennis and Cranleigh School for Girls, in the Class of ‘86, a posh private school in Edinburgh, I did not know what I wanted to do.”

Alison applied to study fine art at three art schools, including Edinburgh College of Art; but she was not accepted at any.

She said: “My art teacher, Mrs Gage, was thrilled because she said that art school would ruin me and I needed to have my butterfly wings.

“For Higher art I wrote an illustrated children’s story and the characters were very popular with my ‘chums’, that being the right word because it was that kind of school.

“I did all the programmes for plays at school and no-one else got a look in. I was Mrs Gage’s protégé.”

Waverley Market had recently opened with “lovely craft units and stalls” and Alison’s dad said: ‘You could set up one of these with your artwork’.

Alison said: “That was me in business aged 19.

“I think my dad, a cash and carry buyer, thought: ‘Let’s see where this goes’.

“Before long it was a success and I was going to trade fairs, such as Harrogate, to buy materials.

“At the start, I bought clip frames from John Lewis which were really fashionable at the end of the ‘80s.

“People started commissioning me to do weddings, birthday presents and babies being born and it grew arms and legs.

“Before I knew it I had two shops in Waverley Market, one in Bruntsfield and one in Stockbridge.

“I thought I had the Midas touch but it was the ‘80s – you could do anything.

“Having four shops and staff, turnover was wonderful, but profits were not so great.

“I do miss having my own business, however, I also enjoy having a salary.”

The Dawyck exhibition came about after Alison painted a landscape for colleague Vicky Brunt.

She said it was wonderful and explained the process of taking a slot at the studio.

Alison, a mum of three teenage daughters, said: “I jokingly said yeah, alright, but since moving to West Linton, five years ago, I’d not picked up a paint brush.

“I don’t know why I put the brush down, probably because I had a proper job.

“The buildings existed, but had not sold as paintings, they were the wedding venues on cards and reproduced digitally.

“When I knew I had the space the pressure was on.

“To be fair, the garden is inspirational so it was not difficult.

“It is a bit mad what I have done – frogs, squirrels and the trees – but I wanted it to light-hearted but recognisably the garden, which a lot of people are passionate about.

“It is a very nice position to be in, working here and being able to do those paintings.”

Alison works in many mediums – ink, watercolour, coloured pencil and is particularly fond of Rotring pens which “architects would have used before computer-aided design”.

Prints, cards and four framed paintings have already been snapped up but there is still time to see the show which ends when Dawyck’s season finishes on November 30.

There is another small display, as Alison invited Biggar silversmith Dave Randall, who re-purposes silver cutlery into artistic creations, to show a selection of his work, in a cabinet among her paintings.