Janet Boulton Paintings & paper relief works, Recent Texts

Since 1993, Janet Boulton has made regular visits to Little Sparta, Ian Hamilton Finlay's poetic sculpture garden in the Pentland Hills near Dunsyre. Given the frequency and duration of her visits and the reverence in which she holds Finlay, who died in 2007, these trips may be termed quasi-pilgrimages. Some of the works here were made during Boulton's time as artist-in-residence at Edinburgh College of Art in 2006.

Her purpose has been straightforward: to record Finlay's remarkable garden and, in a number of instances, the interior of his cottage. That she should have been granted access to his garden and his Home, to which he rarely opened his doors to visitors, demonstrates the trust in which she was held by Finlay and justifies his description of her as "sometime resident artist".

Using various media,including papier-mache relief panels, photography, watercolour and what she terms "garden works" Boulton has paid homage to her mentor. Many of her paintings convey Finlay's love of boats (which he saw as a form of elegiac pastoral) and record his extensive collection of models of these vessels. Stylistically, Boulton's images are as soft as the medium of watercolour itself: hazy and almost dreamlike. Avoiding mimesis, they convey something of Finlay's boy-like wonder.

Boulton's photographic record of her own Finlay-esque, horticulturally-based art conveys an impression of derivation rather than innovation. This observation can also be applied to many of the paper reliefs which merely restate Finlay's original premise, lending little in the way of fresh comment.