Màiri NicGillìosa

I visited Màiri’s studio when she was living in High Borve on the north west coast of Lewis, she gave me a tour of her studio and I could see straight away how enthusiastic she was about her practice. I later invited her to create work for a show at Baile na Cille church in 2021 called ‘Plastic’ where I invited several island artists to respond to the issue of plastic within our environment. Màiri focused on a positive benefit of the material, using up-cycled animal feed tubs in her installation ‘Plastaig’ to hint at the ways crofters have always recycled and reused the materials to hand.

Màiri is a Gaelic visual artist. In her arts practice Gàidhlig forms a key part of the aperture through which she experiences the world. She is interested in the overlapping layers through time of peoples, language, material cultures, relationships with the environment and how these connect and relate to one another.

"My creative practice is research-led and informed by these multi-faceted relationships as I seek to create a ‘sense of place’. I draw on wide-ranging research practices including oral interaction with present-day tradition bearers.

I enjoy the physicality of working with materials to create new pathways of meaning.  This may play out in ‘live’ textural casting off of Lewisian Gneiss, or painting with spring water from Tobar Brìghde’s healing well. I have explored patinating work with peat ash carbon pigmentation using lead off the neighbour’s roof smelted into sugar kelp… I seek to present work that becomes something new in the present, imbued with the past."

Màiri studied Sculpture at Edinburgh Collage of Art, Horticulture at SRUC and has a postgraduate Masters degree in 'Learning and Teaching Gaelic Arts' with the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

https://www.mairigillies.com/

https://www.instagram.com/mairi_nicgilliosa/