With a painting career spanning over five decades, Pam Carter has built up a worldwide reputation and following for her work, making her one of Scotland's best-known and collected contemporary landscape artists working today.
Pam was born and brought up in Tanzania until she was 13. She went on to study at Glasgow School of Art in the early seventies. Her recent awards include the Laing Prize, Visual Arts Scotland, and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons Award at the annual RGI exhibition. Pam exhibits widely throughout the UK and many other parts of the world.
Having lectured part-time for many years at Falkirk College, Pam now paints full-time from her studio in Torrance. She is mostly influenced by the bright colours of the Scottish landscape. The white sands of the west coast are set against dramatic skies and the silhouettes of outlying islands stand like sentinels. Her interest in the use of strong colours may come from her origins in Africa. However, art school also taught her to see the colour and the work of the great colourists, from Titian to the Impressionists and has influenced her painting style over the years since graduation.
"Walking on empty beaches, alone with your thoughts, embracing the elements and hearing the sounds of the rhythm of nature can touch our souls. These are deeply spiritual moments when we often stop to consider the grand design of life itself. At these times it is easy to believe that there is a God and that the intention of life was to be all good.
I love the Scottish landscape - it has all the form and textures that visually stimulate the senses. I am inspired not only by the scene but search out that "divine proportion"- aptly called and indeed the most pleasing to the eye.
These thoughts follow me to the studio where I try to recreate not only the landscape but that spiritual moment. I take a long time to consider the design of my paintings and through the different stages correct and re-correct until, if not the "golden section" is reached, it has at least that same effect on my deep inner being. In my paintings you can feel the presence of mankind but rarely see them - the washing is hung, the lum is reeking, and the telegraph poles are talking. I pay tribute to the cultural past through the ancient dyke wall, the little harbours and the quaint crofts which are happily standing side by side with the grazing sheep.
I use strong colour to interpret the drama of light in the landscape. I am inspired by the changing light sequences of the Western Isles and I have often been awestruck at witnessing what feels like a heavenly scene. Light features strongly in my work. Whether it be light bouncing off the waters of the Hebrides or the sunlit sands before an encroaching storm or sunlight moving across the landscape. It is ever changing, ever travelling. Light is synonymous with hope, a feeling of well being, joy and with God. I find myself always being drawn to the light in both my paintings and my life. That is my strength and my inspiration."
