Rowan Paton is an award-winning painter, living and working in Edinburgh, Scotland. She holds an MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Yale University School of Art, a Postgraduate Diploma in Education from the University of Edinburgh, and a BA in Drawing and Painting from Edinburgh College of Art. Her work has been widely exhibited across the UK, including notable shows at the Royal Scottish Academy, Visual Arts Scotland, and Tatha Gallery. Recent and upcoming exhibitions include Still Life | The Beauty of the Ordinary at The Scottish Gallery (2025) and the RSA's Frontiers: Painting in Scotland Now (2024).
Using collage, printmaking, text, and pattern, Rowan Paton constructs layered visual worlds that feel both imagined and deeply connected to the natural environment. Her process is intuitive and organic, allowing her to explore complex themes such as mental health, environmental change, and the different ways we experience existence. The landscape, most notably mountains, appear frequently in her work, offering a framework through which these ideas unfold.
"Paint provides an immediacy of mark that no other material imparts. It is instant, decisive, luxurious, bold, yet nuanced. The satisfying repetitive drag on linen, applied, reduced, re-applied, washed away, applied again, holds a unique appeal for me.
If the interplay between materiality and narrative is found lacking or absent, it can be frustrating, depressing even. When they interlock, however, it is the reason I continue to make images. Providing purpose and stability, it is still the most surprising, challenging and soothing process - painted contexts to be absorbed by and disappear into."
