Artist Directory
Out of the Blue currently houses over 200 artists, arts organisations and other creative businesses at The Out of the Blue Drill Hall, Abbeymount Studios, NMR Studios (Niddrie Mains), Meanwhile in Leith and Out of the Blue Music Studios. The list below is a selection illustrating the range and quality.
Artists: To update your directory entry or add content, email marketing@outoftheblue.org.uk
- Listing all artits tagged: Abbeymount
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![Logo for Moody Monday Limited]()
Moody Monday debuted to critical acclaim in 2014, led by designer and creative director Eliza Kesuma.
After graduating with a degree in Textiles & Design from Heriot-Watt University, Eliza undertook multiple freelance projects and work experience opportunities with notable design companies. In 2008, a major interiors company recruited her as part of their communication and design team.
Noticing a niche in the interiors market for distinctive designs that challenged traditional creative concepts, Eliza began developing a signature style that was innovative, stylish and luxurious. By embracing individuality, she strives to subvert people’s expectations of interior design with her highly original and provocative collections.
Moody Monday’s core philosophy that beauty can come from the unlikeliest of places underpins each design, product and project Eliza creates. Her ‘Secret Music Collection’, inspired by the hidden inner workings of an abandoned musical organ, produced exquisitely compelling designs that received widespread praise at exhibitions across the UK.
Along with a bespoke service that tailors design concepts to fit the specific needs of clients, Moody Monday welcomes the opportunity to collaborate with innovative interior companies, global brands and businesses.
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![Logo for Eye Joy Art]()
Ever since I was wee, I have always found joy in the visual order of things and organising my surroundings. For me, creating an artwork is like the excitement of moving into a new home and deciding where all your treasured objects belong.
I have a passionate fancy for all things geometric, fine liner pens, architecture, the colour swatch wall in the paint aisle, beach treasure combing, nostalgia, textiles and hygge-liness. My favourite way to get inspired is to wander around the glorious city of Edinburgh and take note of the beautiful details on my stroll.
As a perpetual worrier, I find the repetitive, orderly action of my process shooshes my mind and makes room for quiet concentration. I am naturally drawn to creating meticulous, intricate work which requires all my focus and as a result, slows down my breathing making my practice meditative and calming. Making art fulfils me not only in my desire to cram my life with beauty; it takes care of my wellbeing too!
After growing up in the Scottish Highlands and studying in Glasgow, I have settled as a freelancing visual artist in Edinburgh after studying Painting at Edinburgh College of Art where I developed my drawing style.
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Sarah Kwan
Categories: Design, Illustration, Painting Sarah KwanOut of the Blue Abbeymount Studios
Sarah Kwan Artist is a freelance Illustrator based in Edinburgh who specialises in portraits, food illustration, design, murals and signwriting. Her most recent ‘East Meets West Series’, explores the connections between Scottish / British and Chinese culture in a fun and playful way – with decorative patterns and pops of bright colour.
She graduated with BA Hons Fine Art Drawing & Painting from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design in 2008. She’s exhibited in galleries such as The Royal Scottish Academy and The Scottish National Portrait Gallery.
As well as painting portraits Sarah works with brands to create signs, chalkboards, murals, live painting events and painted window displays. Brands such as: Ruffians Barbers, The Naked Grouse, Wemyss Malts and Dram & Smoke have used her skills in their events and product launches. She is open to new commissions that include portraits, design or painting, and can help create eye-catching designs for your business or events. Please feel free to get in touch anytime to discuss a project.
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Alison Williams
Categories: Crafts, Painting, Physical/Mental Wellbeing, Visual Arts, Writing Alison WilliamsOut of the Blue Abbeymount StudiosMy paintings are often three-dimensional, and my sculptures two-dimensional. I have two parallel ways of working – on paper and on leather. My paintings and drawings celebrate the natural world, exploring close-up the detail of its patterns and its beauty, capturing the wind. I’m fascinated by the flow of energy in nature – how it is always moving and always the same. A burn coming down a hillside is forever moving – your eye is drawn downwards the whole time – but the shapes the water makes coming past the rocks is unchanging. A clump of grasses is shaken by the wind and your eye follows them along the wind’s direction; but the shape of the grasses is unchanging. I work on capturing this paradox, drawing very small things – like the grasses – and then painting them very large, often monochrome from my sculptural training. The flow of energy in nature helps me to find the flow of energy in people, in myself and between people. This flow I capture in leather. My embroidered leatherwork hangings are inspired by my lived experience of Native American Vision Quests, and capture the flow of power and energy and spirit in the lives of the people they are made for, the individuals who commission them.
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Helen Miles trained with mastercraftsmen in Greece who taught using traditional methods with a focus on Byzantine iconography. She later became interested in Roman mosaics and now makes contemporary pieces inspired by ancient designs.
Born in Glasgow in 1963, Helen studied English at Oxford University before moving to America and the Middle East to work as a journalist. It was in 2003 while living in Thessaloniki in Greece, a UNESCO city famous for its concentration of Byzantine churches, that she began to study mosaics in the Byzantine tradition. This led to an interest in Roman mosaics and her passion for them went on to become a full time profession.
Helen Miles is based in Edinburgh and specializes in using Greek stone and marble as well as Winkleman unglazed porcelain. Her aim is to preserve the simplicity and directness of early mosaics while producing works which suit the way we live now.
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Robin Paine
Robin PaineOut of the Blue Abbeymount StudiosRobin Paine is an artist noted for original and accomplished figurative drawings and paintings. She has developed her own lexicon of imagery drawn from her interest in mythology, anthropology, social history, Art history and Natural history.
“My paintings would probably be best described as “figurative” or “realist”. I work from life whenever possible and I have found that this is essential when I’m painting people.
I have been affected by works of art from many periods, ranging from Roman Egyptian painted portraits to paintings of Gwen John, but I would also cite film (i.e. the early films of Jean Luc Godard) and photography (the German photographer August Sander) as sources of inspiration.”
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Edinburgh ceramics workshop is and open practice pottery dedicated to providing learning opportunities and practice space for people who are passionate about working with clay.
Our open studio allows you space and time to develop and refine your pottery practice.
Our members have a wide variety of aims and objectives from simply exploring a creative passion through clay to working towards building careers in the creative Industries as studio potters.
We work in partnership with Edinburgh design school who teach our pottery courses, classes and workshops. Edinburgh design school is an approved Scottish Qualifications Authority teaching centre.
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Cro + Kow Photography
Cro + Kow PhotographyOut of the Blue Abbeymount StudiosCro + Kow is the joint creative space of photographers Sylwia Kowalczyk and Simon Crofts.
Sylwia studied photography at the Krakow Academy of Fine Art and Edinburgh College of Art, and Simon studied law at Oxford. We have a wide range of editorial, commercial and publishing clients, and we are also working constantly on our personal photo projects. More of Sylwia’s personal work is at http://www.sylwiakowalczyk.com, and Simon’s is at http://www.simoncroftsphoto.com.
We are available for photography assignments, whether in Scotland or abroad. Outside Scotland, we have a particular speciality of assignments to Ukraine, Russia, Poland and other Eastern European and former Soviet countries. Apart from English we speak fluent Polish and Russian and reasonable French!
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Karina Pasiut is a contemporary Textile and Print designer.
Her artistic creations are rooted in drawing, painting, screen printing, dyestuff and tapestry taking inspiration from travels and observation of everyday life.
A handmade approach to design is crucial in her practice, stimulating her creativity and exploratory nature, although often supplemented with Photoshop and Cad designs.
Karina is highly passionate about screen print and works with reactive dyes, taking care of all stages from drawing to finished textile print to create unique and original prints.
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Frances Priest
Frances PriestOut of the Blue Abbeymount StudiosMy current work explores and interprets languages of ornament from different cultures, places and periods in history. From my Edinburgh studio I create intricate and colourful ceramic objects that celebrate this fascination for ornament and pattern, using clay as a canvas on which to build richly drawn and layered surfaces of inlaid line, glaze colour and enamel decals.
Beyond the studio I develop projects and commissions that respond to people and places, using my interests as a platform from which to engage with new environments. This approach has lead to work in varied and sometimes unexpected settings, from an English Tudor banqueting room in Sheffield, to a country home on the Scottish Island of Raasay.
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Award winning designer Judy R Clark is famed for her exquisite hand tailored womenswear designs comprising of Harris Tweeds, Scottish lace and antique fabric.
Tipped by British Vogue as one to watch, Clark has carved a credible name for herself in the fashion industry designing womenswear pieces with an eccentric edge in her signature tailoring. The designer has created installations, exhibitions and bespoke ranges for several companies resulting in a series of prestigious accolades for her innovative and creative approach to fashion design.
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Old family photographs are the starting point for my work. Reimagined, with the intention of setting my subjects free from a frozen moment in time and space, I place them into a new orbit. Transcending the personal and sidestepping nostalgia, I create a new narrative and mess with time.
Initially, along with photographs, I use painting, drawing and collage which is manufactured into large scale, digitally woven fabric. This is then cut and reassembled using hand stitched appliqué. I find this use of new technology, combined with traditional techniques, compelling within a contemporary art context.
Represented by Arusha Gallery, Edinburgh
http://www.arushagallery.com
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Painting, mostly in oils, in Edinburgh and East Lothian. Inspired by the light, weather and seasonal phenomena. Occasionally also by strange beasts and plants.
Each painting is influenced by the preparation of the surface and materials, often based on very old recipes and techniques.
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![Logo for Borja Moronta]()
Borja Moronta is originally from Asturias, northern Spain. He settled in Edinburgh after graduating as an Architect in 2016 (Madrid Polytechnic University). Throughout university, he had big interest in different disciplines such as photography, ceramics or carpentry, and always felt drawn to that architecture which focuses on the materiality of the buildings.
His pottery practice began at the beginning of 2018, as part of a recovery process from a severe surgery due to nerve damage on his left hand. He joined Edinburgh Ceramics Workshop evening classes and soon became a member. Borja worked his way through the ECW structure and became part of their Incubator programme for emerging ceramicists in July 2019, setting up his own studio just a year later.
Today, based in his Edinburgh studio, based in Abbeymount, Borja makes ceramics that follow basic, calmed and natural forms on a soft tone palette. Each piece is individually crafted on the potter’s wheel and throughout all the stages, therefore showing all the nature of handmade.
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The single most important attribute a professional photographer has and a client needs, is a point of view.
It’s the product of hard graft, experience and years of passion for creating high quality, relevant, memorable and cost effective images.
I work documenting people, finished pieces and projects through photography or film, working either in my studio or on location with whatever format is appropriate.
I take attention to detail and accurate colour reproduction; clients can rest assured that their project is handled with enthusiasm and an understanding of time and budgetary constraints.
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Dried is a small, independent business based in Edinburgh Scotland, that was born out of a love for all things floral. Like many people, I’ve fallen head over heels for dried flowers and the beauty they deliver year after year.
Unlike fresh cut flowers which are mass produced to have a short-life cycle, dried flowers are a more sustainable option that last years and years. All of our dried flowers are sourced sustainably and responsibly in order to have as little impact on the environment as possible.
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PHILIA is a multifaceted creative studio with a focus on ethical production.
An evolving project, PHILIA creative output is garment-led, with a view to cross-industry innovation and collaboration.
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SkinnyMalinkyQuilts was founded in 2014 by award winning printmaker Lucy Engels. She creates luxury home ware that is known for it’s colourful sophistication and high quality. Every quilt is unique and original using only the best quality fabrics and wadding. They are machine pieced and quilted, with each being finished by hand.
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Alex Mascolo is an Interdisciplinary Researcher, working between the fields of Contemporary Art, Anthropology and Photography. Her research focuses on the subject of Death, specifically, how we can improve experiences of death, dying and bereavement. She is currently a first year PhD student at Edinburgh College of Art, exploring the ways in which food is used to commemorate and connect with the dead.
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Mauda
Categories: Fashion Design/Dressmakers/Textiles MaudaOut of the Blue Abbeymount StudiosContact: Carla CostaTimeless and contemporary fashion design for today’s modern woman. At Mauda the aims are simple. Create great quality, contemporary fashion pieces for women and maximise the cooperation of local craftsmanship, business and skills. We’ll know that we’ve got it right not just by thriving on our own but as we watch collaborators grow through our journey together.
