Jade Stout and Naoko Shibuya
Amber Roome, Edinburgh
23 November - 22 December

Reviewed by Rea Cris

The artists are dislayed in separate rooms in the 'white cube' that is the Amber Roome gallery (its maybe too white). Both artists are graduates from Edinburgh College of Arts.

Jade Stout's paintings are small and compact. Her palette incorporates colours of mauve, beige, dark green and brown and represent seascape memories from her childhood in Orkney to recent trips to Mull. The paint is thick and textured creating lines, waves and splashes. The canvases are divided into rows of colour sometimes leaving a large portion of the canvas white. The strict composition and clinically clean lines reminds one of a modern-day Mondrain. Stout has managed to transcend personal experience and, literally, create a canvas for the viewer to recall all the landscapes held in our memories. As I look at her paintings I travel through exotic carpets, bamboo forests, industrial estates, sand and rust. There is a beauty, simplicity and sincerity in the work that one rarely sees anymore.

Naoko Shibuya's paintings are disappointing. She too uses the same colour scheme with a splash and sparkle of gold and sliver paint, but this where the similarities end. Her paintings are graphic representations of trees, plants, flowers, spirals and birds. Though well executed, they are too decorative and leave the viewer numb. The paintings remind me of a similar bird-plant-spiral pattern found at IKEA on anything and everything from fabric,pillows, rugs, lampshades, duvets and any other surface they can find. And with Shibuya's cheapest painting coming in at £550, best get yourself to IKEA.

www.amberroome.co.uk