Marlena Frick is a former Scotsman and Daily Mail art critic who now seeks to express spirit of place in acrylic paint. She believes in the emotional use of colour to draw the viewer. Marlena’s work is entirely intuitive and she gets carried away by the fundamental rhythms of Nature, especially by the sea with its constantly shifting moods. When looking at a scene, she takes from it all that excites her to make it into something which coveys a sense of what it does to her ^ a sense of exhilaration at being alive and part of everything.

Marlena says that she is never happier than when out on a mountain or beside a wild sea pushing colour around until she achieves something she likes. While reality does not concern her very much she wants her paintings to remain emotionally accessible to the viewer. Marlena’s paintings in The Moods of the Sea Exhibition at Broughton Gallery in May are the result of recent trips to the West Coast, Iona and Mull, and to the North Berwick Coast. The moods vary from a chilly east coast dawn and swelling seas around the Bass Rock to the wind-ruffled waters of the Sound of Iona and the reflective moonlit calm of Morar.