Blog

&Gallery Solo Show

Jun 14, 2025

 

5 – 20th July 2025

& Gallery,  3  Dundas Street, Edinburgh EH3 6QG

We’re delighted to welcome Karen Stamper back to the gallery for her first solo exhibition, Salvage.

 

After first introducing her work during our inaugural open call last year, Karen now returns with her latest body of work – a bold and playful series of collage paintings that move beyond their original inspiration. Rooted in the rugged aesthetics of urban boatyards, with their weather-worn detritus and towering structures, these works draw from the visual language of forgotten industrial spaces. On-site drawings and the collection of discarded materials – offcuts of wood, paint sticks, and garish plastics – serve as the foundation for small three-dimensional studies, which in turn inform the development of her collage paintings.

 

In her recent process of inquiry, it is the surface beneath that begins to tell its own story. What matters is not the application of paint in lush, expressive brushstrokes – too removed from the artist’s hand – but how it has been used functionally: to decorate, protect, conceal flaws, mend, revive, and patch, often over many years. The tactile evidence of human interaction and the accidental marks left by practical fixings are central to the work. Stamper turned to house paint as her medium when acrylics felt overly synthetic and lacking the depth she sought.

 

The process begins with the layering of paper, paint, and varnish, followed by cycles of sanding, washing, and further collage. Shapes are cut, torn, and reassembled, creating surfaces alive with unexpected textures and visual surprises. As edges and found marks emerge, they take on a life of their own, forming playful, unconventional compositions that defy traditional boundaries.

 

What captivates Stamper is the human touch – the accidental marks and practical fixings left behind over time. Materials once used to decorate, protect, repair, or conceal become part of a visual narrative. Imperfections – scratches, stains, remnants, drips, and patterns – are embraced and transformed into a rich painterly vocabulary, allowing each surface to tell its own evolving story.

 

In this series, marks and edges are no longer incidental; they become the subject themselves. Each kink, curve, and blemish is heightened and celebrated. Through this rich layering of surface and form, Stamper enters an exciting new phase of her collage practice – one that remains firmly rooted in the foundations of her earlier work.

 

Stamper now lives and works in Cambridge

Contemporary Collage Magazine Interview

Nov 13, 2024

Have you heard of Contemporary Collage Magazine? It is an amazing online and physical magazine for collage artists. It is full of wonderful images of all different kinds of collage from around the world, plus interviews and many tips.Each month they have a collage call out with a different theme that anyone can enter.

Last year I won the Series Prize and this year I have a 12 page spread about the development of my collage work over the years. I would definitely recommend subscribing to this gorgeous magazine!

Wanderlust – with a Sketchbook

Jun 12, 2024

Wanderlust – a strong desire to wander or travel and explore the world

I have always had wanderlust, so making my online course Your Travel Sketchbook has been a delight.

I travelled back through my many books and journeys to make a course that will help you to find your own unique way of recording your trips and travels. I use pens, inks and collage in a free way that allows the character of the place to shine through.

 

When I first started recording in sketchbook, on an Art Collage travel scholarship to Amsterdam and Paris, it was more of a diary of funny events and art gallery visits, with little thought to the presentation. Even at art college we were not really encouraged to work in books, and even if we did it was a pencil drawing, or a few ideas on a page with little development or exploration. I know from my own teaching experience that students nowadays have sketchbooks that are full of amazing ideas, drawings, collage notes, a wonderful record of their teenagers years. A treasure to look back on. I tell them to put their book under their bed for a few years, and then look and see how wonderfully creative you are!

A sketchbook, a few pens and my heavy SLR camera – that was my art travel kit in my 20’s. Gradually as time went by I included collage papers, glue and a set of watercolours. Some people use identical books each time, whereas I have varied my books from A3 down to pocket size, I have adapted pre-printed books, stitched and  spiral-bound, but my favourite is the concertina.

 

 

I fell in love with concertina sketchbooks about 15 years ago and haven’t looked back. I use the A5 size from Seawhite of Brighton www.artesaver.co.uk The paper is strong (140gms) and double. I have worked wet on wet with inks and watercolours, scratchy pens and sticks and these books hold up well. They also have a range of sizes from pocket upwards. I prefer A5 which is a good size for travelling, about the size of a paperback book.

 

 

If you have taken one of my courses I hope that you are a concertina convert by now!  I know that the many people  are addicted to them. I love how a concertina allows your drawing/collage/mark making to flow from one page to the next, a never ending story, and when one side is complete just turn over and carry on.

The main focus of my latest course Your Travel Sketchbook is collaging and drawing Mediterranean towns and villages that I know so well, but you can apply it to anywhere in the world, even your local town. There is an option of some basic perspective and a spot of sketching at sea!

You need to be a realist: working in a sketchbook outdoors often means perching on a cold step, searching for shade, dealing with noise, traffic, bystanders and impatient friends! Above all therefore we need to have a sense of humour, be adaptable and sometimes quick on the draw!

This course is about getting out there and getting on with it!

I share all my personal inspiration using examples of my sketchbook drawings collage and photographs from France, Spain, Italy, Greece, Morocco, Australia, Zanzibar, New Zealand and Bali to help you see the world through my eyes. I demonstrate, in short videos,working on location and back in my hotel room.

 

 

Your Travel Sketchbook is a labour of love. I would like to keep adding to it as time goes on, and hopefully show some of your sketchbooks – if you share them with me. 🙂

 

 

Flotsam and Jetsam – Jan 24

Jan 25, 2024

This series of work started with my Flotsam and Jetsam collection. These scraps of life collected were found on beaches around the world. I love the fact that they have been previously once loved or definitely once used, that they have worn and weathered, reshaped by time and weather,and the fact they have travelled miles across the ocean.

I started by making mini sculptures fixing pieces together with their own shapes or elastic bands.

Drawing with ink, pen, Woodies, Artgraph, pencil and paint brushes give me freedom to capture the character of these little sculptures. It wasn’t long before I moved on from observation to expressive mark making. This project is ongoing.

Sketchbook Freedom

Jan 17, 2024

At Open Studios visitors love to look through my sketchbooks. I don’t know of anyone who doesn’t love to sit quietly and open a book, especially an artists book.

Of course there are many different styles, from realistic beautifully rendered drawings to splashy expressive marks, but with the turn of each page we feel that we are getting closer to the artist and their true self.

When I am responding to a subject, on location, I know that I rarely stop to think about the placement of marks on the page, it is pure response to the subject. I am not worrying if will look right, or what a viewer might think. It is this collecting of the subject that evolves and develops and comes out in my bigger collage pieces.

For me, this is why my sketchbook are so important for allowing myself to free up open up many more possibilities. Over the years people have asked me how can they get away from the fear of the white page, or doing it right, or drawing from observation and not liking the results. Allowing ourselves to break free of that control and express what really interest us in the subject, or materials, is the way forward.

In my online course, Free Up Your Sketchbooks and Grow there are no realistic  drawings, no working from observation, no worrying about if you are doing the right thing or if it looks right. There are no strict instructions to follow step-by-step with identical results. You will not have a beautiful finished showcase sketchbook, but you will have an expressive working sketchbook, full of ideas and inspiration. 

In this course there are short, clear video demonstrations showing you how to develop your ideas. I demonstrate with my own concertina sketchbook throughout the course, developing, editing, composing and recomposing as I work through the lessons. Everyone’s sketchbook will be completely different as personal styles develop. 

 

In my own work, and on this course, we start with playful and exciting mark making. There are no rules, no goals to focus on and no limited ideas to work towards. We simply let the materials work – drawing tools, collage, acrylics and see what is revealed. It is in these marks that we look for the chance elements, the surprises and all the new possibilities to work in new directions, some previously unknown. There is no critical voice here, we respond in our own way, remaining open to new developments. As the book develops, this may very well move into a more realistic representation or abstraction, the choice is yours. I show examples of both directions.

At the end of the course you will have a book full of inspiring ideas which you can continue to work into or push in further directions.

For full information on all my courses please go to my website page

Undercover

Jan 10, 2024

Undercover   Paper collage and acrylic on wooden panel 30 x 30 cm   Tray framed in white 33 x 33 x 3 cm. £560

Artists Residency

Sep 19, 2022

In September 2022 I participated in a two-week artist residency at Emily Ball’s Seawhite studio near Brighton.Working in a massive studio with six more artists was a real treat for me. Many times in the past I have discussed with Emily how frustrating it is not to be able to find large studio space in my area; this is a great solution.

The pictures below should give you a taster of my week. Firstly setting up my space, hanging up images that are important to my series including photographs and my small cardboard studies. I also took time to visit Shoreham and had a fantastic poke around the boatyard on a grey September day – in my element!

 

I have been working on my salvage series for at least six months, developing small studies of around 30cm to 40cm, in paint and paper collage on panels. This scale is fine in my small studio as I could place them of my shelves and on the back wall. But there is no way for me to expand into a series of bigger work, and to be able to hang and see them altogether. This was my aim for my two weeks, to make big work and to hang them together, large and small, and then see how they communicate with each other.

Because I had been working steadily I knew exactly where I was and what I needed to do when I started the residency. I had prepared some panels with a few layers of paper, but I need to continue building these before adding colour and cutting into shapes. This meant that I was working confidently with no indecision, which was a bonus. I know that if I hadn’t had this solid work behind me it would have taken me quite a few days to get into the groove.

This residency can be for one week or two. Each week I was joined by different artists. It was wonderful to see and hear how we all work: some work gently – hardly moving, some stretch up high and low, some sit quietly using words to stimulate and inspire them and one made marks with her feet. I was in the stretching high and low, across and under camp and I tried to keep my sawing and wood splitting into a minimum! The rhythm and flow of each day was marked by all these sounds of activity – along with the kettle boiling and the opening of the cake tin. Gradually, as each day developed we got to know each other’s work a little more to the extent that genuine and helpful conversations opened up. Below you can see Emily Ball, Felicity Heath and Geoff Parham working in the studio.

 

I would thoroughly recommend taking time out of your own studio to work in a dedicated and focused artists’ space for one week or two. It will certainly move your work on and also give you space to breathe and reevaluate what you doing in your own work.

Emily will be opening up places for the next residency in May soon.

 

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