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Winter Exhibition 2025-26: Open Up A World Of Beauty
14 November 2025 – 18 January 2026
Graystone Gallery
52 Hamilton Place, Stockbridge
Edinburgh EH3 5AX
Graystone Gallery in Edinburgh presents its Winter Exhibition 2025-26, a group show gathering nearly 40 Scottish contemporary artists working across painting, ceramics and glass. Running through mid-January in the gallery’s Stockbridge location, the exhibition functions as both seasonal celebration and survey of current Scottish art practice, offering collectors and viewers a concentrated encounter with the country’s creative output.
The show’s breadth defines its character. Oil paintings range from dramatic seascapes and Highland landscapes to intimate still lifes and gestural abstractions. Ceramic works explore colour and form through sculptural and functional approaches. Glass pieces manipulate light and space, designed as interior focal points. This material diversity reflects the gallery’s curatorial approach: representing varied practices within a cohesive visual programme that speaks to how people actually collect and live with art.
Kerry Souter contributes mixed media coastal works shaped by Scotland’s shoreline. Working in acrylics with attention to texture and collage, Souter creates intuitive, multi-layered compositions that translate the raw patterns of the coast into ethereal abstractions. Her practice brings contemporary sensibility to traditional Scottish landscape painting, prioritizing emotional response over topographical precision. As such, Souter’s work captures the organic rhythms of Scotland’s western edge.
Jane Cruickshank balances Souter’s abstractions with luminous realism. Her still lifes transform everyday objects through precise attention to light and shadow, creating compositions where familiar subjects acquire a luminescent quality. Objects appear to move beyond the canvas plane, demonstrating technical mastery that makes traditional still life feel both nostalgic and contemporary. Cruickshank offers quiet contemplation within the exhibition’s broader energy, her paintings functioning as meditative anchors.
Kerry Souter’s “Hold Fast” Pauline Cumming extends the exhibition into three dimensions through hand-built ceramic plates and pots inspired by 17th century Delftware. Working in white earthenware and stoneware with characteristic Delft blue underglaze, Cumming depicts strong female figures often adapted from classical paintings. Her feminist ceramics explore women’s narratives with humour and directness, addressing motherhood, aging and female experience without compromise. Trained at Edinburgh College of Art (1985) under Elizabeth Blackadder, Cumming challenges historical representations while maintaining technical rigour in her hand-built construction.
The exhibition’s scale allows for comprehensive engagement with Scottish contemporary practice beyond institutional programming. By including nearly 40 artists, Graystone presents multiple approaches to landscape, figuration and abstraction simultaneously. Viewers observe how different practitioners address coastal environments, domestic interiors and material concerns through varying aesthetic frameworks, creating a layered picture of contemporary Scottish art that resists singular narratives.
Graystone Gallery‘s position in Stockbridge matters for understanding the exhibition’s context. Edinburgh‘s creative neighborhood on the Water of Leith’s northern bank sustains an ecosystem of independent shops, cafes and art spaces. Contemporary galleries in smaller markets serve dual functions: exhibition venues and community anchors for regional practice. The Winter Exhibition demonstrates how galleries outside major urban centres can present ambitious programming that speaks to both local audiences and international collectors.
The exhibition’s seasonal timing capitalizes on Edinburgh’s winter character. Running through mid-January, the show captures the pre-holiday period and the slower weeks of early winter when domestic focus intensifies. Work addressing coastal landscapes, interior scenes and material explorations aligns with this context, offering collectors pieces suited to longer evenings and contained indoor spaces. The gallery ships nationally and internationally, with the full collection available in person and online.
For those navigating Scotland‘s contemporary art scene, the Winter Exhibition provides concentrated access to current practice across multiple mediums. The show’s accessible pricing combined with flexible viewing and international shipping makes it relevant for local collectors and those engaging with Scottish art from elsewhere, positioning Graystone as a gateway to understanding how contemporary Scottish artists are working now.
Winter Exhibition 2025-26: Open Up A World Of Beauty runs until the 18th of January, 2026 at Graystone Gallery, 52 Hamilton Place, Stockbridge Edinburgh©2025 Graystone Gallery
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