Version Galore: All Art comes from other Art

I loved spending time with the meticulous mark making of John Martin HRSA. His Deluge print, of a biblical storm speaks to my fears.

The intriguing painted symbols of Victoria Crowe's Into an Older Land hover at the edge of my understanding, but while lying awake in the night, the symbols seemed to shift in my mind, falling into place, like the pieces of a puzzle.

My fatiguied adaption offers, a mountain sheltering blackthorn in bloom, light emitting from Apollo's head, Medusa as birthing goddess. The potency and resilience of spring bulbs in flower. A mother's wild love, and the shelter of a piece of hard fought for ground.

Following the work of Linda Lamb I have recreated a scene which portrays myself looking through a mirror while in my studio. Since there is little information on the artist Linda Lamb, this was one of the interpretations of her artwork that I chose to recreate.

I was drawn to the ambiguity of this piece as it was left unfinished with no title or description as to why. I felt there was a mystery to this work which is why I chose to continue similar themes through my own art.

Fragile as fabric, family resemblance falls to the whim of time. Likeness to a late grandmother fades away, sped along by the changes wrought in transition.

The quilt - a craft taught to me by my mother - binds together two likenesses in perpetuity: my late grandmother, Judy, and myself, both aged six. Our long hair, small noses, and close-lip smiles become less a fleeting mimicry and more a lasting testament to a once shared girlhood, lived sixty-eight years apart.

Reflecting on The Dreamers, my painting reclaims the depiction of women from the confines of the male gaze. The figures in the original, though serene, often feel ornamental-passive subjects shaped by the aesthetic ideals rather than individuality.

In contrast, my <dreamers> exist without performance or pretence. They are caught in an unguarded moment, not posed for admiration but simply being - imperfect, vulnerable, real. Their presence is their own, untamed by expectation. I seek to unravel the polished facades of traditional portrayals, offering instead a vision of femininity that is raw, unfiltered and deeply human.

Inspired by Alasdair Wallace's subtle critique of the Fête Galante, this work reimagines the 18th-century French painting style for a modern audience. I was interested in taking paintings that may be overlooked by modern society, learning and understanding its language and interpreting it in a contemporary context.

The fluidity of ink disrupts Fête Galante's highly constructed visions of Arcadia, allowing chance and spontaneity to disrupt the idealised landscape. Soft washes and organic forms evoke a dreamlike atmosphere, blurring the boundary between fantasy and reality. By embracing unpredictability, the piece challenges the artificial perfection of the Fête Galante, allowing space to reconsider the allure and contradictions of these eighteenth-century scenes in a contemporary context.

Responding to the subtle distortions and trickery of light in William Stewart MacGeorge's Hallowe'en, these paintings explore the disfiguring potential of light and shadow. In MacGeorge's original, lanterns bounce lights across the faces, catching moments of excitement and anticipation. The light creates figures that are wholly new.

My work seeks to appreciate the storytelling powers of light, fragmenting each layer of light, figure and shadow to see the otherness of the figure created by the transient setting.

The Celtic goddess Cailleach (meaning divine old hag and derived from Old Irish for 'the veiled one') is oft associated in Scottish folklore with the creation of landscapes and weather, particularly storms and winter.

James Giles RSA painted The Weird Wife in 1830 - a strange and unusual piece for its time, and not much is known about his motivations behind it. Set in a fictitious Abderdeenshire landscape the original work possibly alludes to the goddess.

In my re-interpretation I wanted to take the supernatural elements of Giles' work and play on its themes and motifs shown through a contemporary, more abstracted lens.

Nine Tenths of the Law by Gordon Mitchell RSA explores possession and ownership, which resonated deeply with me, prompting me to reflect on how we claim ownership - not just of objects and spaces, but also of ideas and memories. The tension between holding on and letting go, symbolised by the blue ribbon in the painting, stirred something within me - a materialistic struggle I have with objects that hold memories.

This triptych is my reinterpretation of that same tension, reimagining the uncanny ways in which we become attached to possessions and the memories they carry, and the fragility of that attachment.

This painting depicts a portrait of my mother. Inspired by The Artist's Wife (1917) by James Bell Anderson RSA, compelled by its tenderness and history. After sitting for her husband, Anne Fairburn faced unimaginable loss, loosing both her husband, James, and their son, Charles, within months. This gave the painting a haunting intimacy, showing how portraiture preserves presence beyond time.

For my piece, I asked my father to photograph my mother, capturing her through his eyes. A woman seen by her husband, painted by her child. My work honours both women, immortalised through the eyes of those who love them.

Reuben and Isabella takes inspiration from Diego de Velasquez's Equestrian Portrait of Philip IV which is part of a collection of copy paintings by John Frederick Lewis HRSA. My painting comments on the role of equestrian portraits in art history where men were traditionally depicted on their horses as symbols of dominance and control.

By painting a modern woman in contemporary riding gear on horseback (photographed when visiting Lasswade Stables in Edinburgh), I attempt to reclaim this historically patriarchal space for female strength, autonomy and presence, whilst simultaneously exhibiting a more equal relationship between horse and rider.

Life drawing played a critical role in the history of the RSA and I wanted to honor not just the artist but the sitter as well. The majority of RSA still life models were working class women who had little to no contemporary representation in art.

I use large scale ink paintings to explore the relationship between the sitter and us as the audience, challenging our preconceptions of the nude and our societal expectatoins for the female body.

Othrys reflects capitalism's intervention in reshaping the Earth through mining and extraction, creating voids that mirror artificial mountains - an allegory of extractivism.

Inspired by Annie Cattrell's Fault, which drew my attention to the hidden landscapes, Othrys, explores the vast topographies between the mantle and crust revealed by recent seismic studies.