ABERDEEN.- A major new exhibition of work by one of Scotland’s most highly regarded artists, Frances Walker, opened at Aberdeen Art Gallery, Schoolhill.

"Place Observed in Solitude" celebrates the artist’s 80th year and marks the first public showing of works from all periods of her prodigious career, including her most recent series of spectacular landscapes of the Antarctic.

These, along with work from public and private collections illustrate the theme of solitary landscape which runs through all of Frances Walker’s work, her celebration of Scotland’s coastline and her continuing journey to wilder and more remote places, including the Arctic and Antarctic.

Curator of the exhibition, Griffin Co, (Assistant Keeper of Fine Art) said: “This is an exceptional exhibition – it celebrates Frances Walker’s 80th birthday and her significant career and launches our very exciting 125th anniversary Gallery programme.

“The exhibition traces Frances Walker’s lifelong fascination with wilderness, nature, land, sea, weather and solitude. Her work is anchored in landscape and she has a particular affinity with places which are solitary by their nature and remote by their geography.

“She finds her inspiration in the wildest and most desolate places. The depiction of the snowy mountains, the glaciers, the floating ice, windswept sea, weathered rock, elemental skies, vast beaches and ragged coastlines becomes the nuances of the landscape which are rendered through her meticulous and intense visual focus. While each work in itself is complete, it is only by viewing the exhibition as a whole that the artist’s vision of the solitude as the exploration and union of self and nature is really revealed.”

The exhibition is complemented by a new book about the artist and a documentary film made by Peacock Visual Arts and filmmaker Adam Proctor with the support of Friends of Aberdeen Art Gallery, the Scottish Arts Council and Peacock Visual Arts.

Frances Walker is also the subject of this year’s prestigious Royal Scottish Academy Sir William Gillies Bequest Lecture which will take place at 7pm on Wednesday, March 17th at Aberdeen Art Gallery. The lecture, Frances Walker in the wider context will be given by eminent art historian and critic, Duncan Macmillan HRSA.

Frances Walker, Place Observed in Solitude will be on show at Aberdeen Art Gallery until Saturday April 10th.