Andrew Lambirth

Quiet art

Janet Boulton: Remembering Little Sparta<br /> Edinburgh College of Art, until 30 August

issue 15 August 2009

Janet Boulton: Remembering Little Sparta
Edinburgh College of Art, until 30 August

Janet Boulton (born 1936) is an artist of integrity and dedication, whose principal subject is still-life. She paints in watercolour, that most demanding of media, and eschews drama of subject or treatment. She has chosen a difficult path, and one which attracts little attention, particularly in an art world dominated by sensationalism. Boulton’s is a quiet art, its aim residing in the subtlest differentiations of tone and placing. She paints exquisite compositions of glass vessels, making of their reflective surfaces a fitting subject for contemplation, a modern vanitas. She is also a passionate gardener, and one of her most heartfelt projects in recent years — besides the designing and tending of her own small garden in Oxfordshire — has been visiting and recording Ian Hamilton Finlay’s famous garden in the Pentland Hills of southern Scotland.

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