Red Road Paintings

Painting Red Road

Red Road is a place of contrasts, hanging in the balance of being a visual and architectural icon and its gradual erasure from the North Glasgow landscape. Thousands of people have lived in the flats at Red Road, and many more have come to know this place as an awe-inspiring landmark, not only for the ambitious scale of its architecture, but for what it once aimed to achieve socially. The flats will soon become a memory for the people who have come to identify with this urban landscape.

Artists Simon Montgomery and Dawn McDowell are producing a series of paintings based on the Red Road community of high rise flats, recording and interpreting the urban landscape in order to capture in paint this changing, ‘deconstructing’ environment, literally and metaphorically. Their paintings evoke the multi-dimensional qualities of the area, some finding unconventional or incidental points of view, others exploring the spaces in-between the buildings and the people who occupy them.

Simon Montgomery is a Lanarkshire-born artist and architectural historian and lives and works in Edinburgh. He is an architecture graduate of Edinburgh College of Art but has concentrated in painting portraits and urban landscapes over the past five years. He explores themes of place, community and our connection with urban environments through his painting. He also works as a specialist in the historic and built environment.

Dawn McDowell is an architectural historian and painter. Originally from Canada, and a graduate in Fine Art at the University of Toronto and Sheridan College, she now lives and works in Edinburgh.  She explores the concept of memory and place, with a focus on post-industrial and modern urban landscapes. She also works as specialist in the historic and built environment.

If you are interested in finding out more about ‘Painting Red Road’ please contact Simon at [email protected] (07762 547 981) or Dawn at [email protected] (07885 285 079).
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