Home > Uniquely Unspoilt Magazine > Issue 8 > art

Buying Scottish Art

Souvenir buying is a great way to remind you of your holiday, but choosing something that you?ll actually want to look at when you get home is another story.

Buying art is ideal - you can buy a painting or print of somewhere you visited, you can spend as much or as little as you like, and you can take home something original.  Many galleries even take commissions if you really want something completely unique.  

Here?s a variety of places around Scotland where art is both on display and on sale.

1. Swallow Studio, Ullapool is run from a renovated croft cottage, and has a range of artwork, prints, cards, portraits and paintings for sale inspired by the beauty of the surrounding mountains. If you fancy having a go yourself, they even offer painting lessons, or if you have something particular in mind, they offer commissions at reasonable prices.  Charcoal portraits can also be done on the spot.

2. Another cottage gallery is the McEwan Gallery, near Ballater, Deeside which deals in mostly Scottish 19th and 20th century art, including landscapes and portraits of Highlanders in all their kilted glory.

3. Everything in The Lost Gallery in Strathdon, Aberdeenshire is handpicked by the owners, with an eclectic selection of paintings, photography and sculpture on offer by Scottish modern artists.

The gallery is run from a nineteenth century farmhouse in Glen Nochty by the Cairngorms and even has an outdoor Sculpture Park.  It?s also the only place in Scotland where you can buy Inuit carvings from the North Pole which have been tagged by the Canadian government to prove they?re authentic!

4. To see an artist at work, Trotternish Artist Studio and Gallery in Kilmaluag, Skye, is a working studio/gallery with spectacular scenery roundabout.  There are landscape originals of Skye itself and the Highlands & Islands as well as scenes of croft houses, fishing stations and clinker boats.

5. The Strathearn Gallery in Crieff, Perthshire is run by a creative family to encourage professional artists working in Scotland, with paintings, prints, sculpture, ceramics and much more for sale.  They even do an online ordering service if you can?t get there in person.

6. Kranenburg & Fowler Fine Arts in Oban on the west coast specialises in original paintings from the very best of today?s artists, many from the Glasgow School of Art, and exhibitions are run all year, including artefacts, pottery and designer jewellery.

7. The St Andrews Fine Art shop in St Andrews, Fife has its walls crowded with over 250 original works by traditional, modern & contemporary Scottish Artists. 

8. Watercolour artists Ken Lochhead travels all over Scotland to paint familiar and lesser-known scenes and landscapes which are then printed onto high-quality cards and sold in his gallery in Haddington, East Lothian.  He also makes detailed illustrated pictorial maps of different Scottish areas, and both the cards and maps can also be seen and ordered online. 

Cottages relevant to this article

The following holiday cottages are situated within easy reach of the locations mentioned above: