Joyce Gunn Cairns
"Joyce shows how closely allied to feeling true drawing can be." Duncan MacMillan, The Scotsman, Oct 2004
Duncan Macmillan, Scotsman 7.10.2017
There is no link, except contemporaneity, but in the Sutton Gallery Joyce Gunn Cairns is paired with Cecile Simonis. The latter creates imagined dramas. Often set beneath a night sky, they are usually monochromatic. The mystery is in the unspoken drama, but of Joyce Gunn Cairns it is more that of life itself. Her tentative but searching drawing mimics the way we seek to understand each other and the world around us. She has now translated this approach with increasing success from drawing to painting using a scratched and rubbed surface that works by inference and suggestion. The result in Woman with Cat and Tree, for instance, or Reclining Nude with Cat is really impressive. She has also painted several still life’s, with equally striking results.
Jan Patience, Sunday Post, August 2023 (invited artist,Pittenweem Arts Festival):
“Gunn Cairns’ drawings and paintings spring from a deep connection to people and living creatures. …. With a few feathery strokes she captures an essence.”
Duncan MacMillan, Scotsman, November 2023:
“Gunn Cairns’ works here are mostly profoundly sympathetic portraits of people (and cats) …. We get a sense of the relationship between sitter and pet as in some sense one of equals…...”
Susan Mansfield , Scotsman , March 2021 , “ The subtle accomplished works of Joyce Gunn Cairns are a pleasure to spend time with, and tend to yield greater depths the longer one looks at them.”
Duncan MacMillan, Scotsman 8th October 2016 . Review of Sutton exhibition with Alasdair Gray "Several .. are very effective. .. A strange painting of a womans torso is outstanding..."
Duncan MacMillan, Scotsman, 21st February 2015. Review of VAS exhibition in RSA. "Paintings include Joyce Gunn Cairns' tender and beautiful Absence......"
Jan Patience, The Herald, 7 Feb 2015. Review of VAS exhibition in RSA. "... some fine art from some of Scotland's finest painters, including Kate Downie ... and Joyce Gunn Cairns.."
Jan Patience, The Herald, 11 Oct 2013. "A lover of literature as well as an artist whose robust yet strangely delicate figurative paintings and portraits of prominent cultural figures are much sought after, Gunn Cairns is a walking talking buzzball of nervous energy".
Duncan Macmillan, Scotsman 7.3.2013. reviewing the SSA exhibition in the RSA. "vivid graphic portrait". (My painting one of the images used to illustrate feature!)
"Alasdair Gray and Joyce Gunn Cairns are two of the most highly individual artists among our contemporaries." Duncan Macmillan, Scotsmanm April 2012
"Like Alasdair Gray, Gunn Cairns is a one-off, a maelstrom of creative energy which never stops probing and pushing ..." Jan Patience, Herald Arts April 2012
"Joyce Gunn Cairns ' remarkable paintings ... demonstrate how many different kinds of visual truths there are ;..... in these graphic and unflinching images, she not only manages that sense of reaching out to touch; she conveys how, from inwards, we feel outward; what it is like to be in one's own skin..." Duncan MacMillan, The Scotsman, Feb 2011
"Joyce Gunn Cairns ....has taken to printing like a natural in a series of powerful screenprints. In several she combines an image with a text ..... The orderly text, whether written or printed, complements the ragged, inquiring line of the artist's drawing, just as the words complement the image. ..... Among other works there is a wonderful screenprint of a hare .." Duncan MacMillan, The Scotsman Feb 2009.
"Joyce Gunn Cairns has produced two marvellous etchings .... which manage to convey something of the vibrancy and subtlety of her drawing in print form." Susan Mansfield, The Scotsman, Nov 2010
Other Reviews
- The Scotsman, Nov 2010, Duncan MacMillan- The Scotsman, Festival Image of the Day, August 2009
- The Scotsman, July 2009
- The Herald, July 2009
- Münchner Zeiting, 2008
- Scotsman, 6 July 2007
- Scotsman, 27 July 2007 (The Naked Portrait)
- Scotsman April 2005 (Duncan MacMillan)
- Scotsman Oct 2004 (Duncan MacMillan)
- Sunday Herald May 2004 (Alan Taylor)
- List, August 2002
- The Herald, August 2002
- Sunday Herald, June 2002, May 2004
- Leipzig Volkszeitung, March 2002
- The Times, March 2001 (Giles Sutherland)
- Glasgow Herald, March 2001 (Ann Donald)
- List, February 2001 Narcissus, SNPG, 2001
- Edinburgh Evening News, January 2001
- Sunday Times, December 2000
- ArtWork, December 1998
- The Scotsman, 1996
- The List, 1996
- The Edinburgh Evening News, 1991
- Observer Scotland, 1989