Inverness College UHI artist paints striking images of Victorian Market shopkeepers
A STUDENT’S fondness for the Victorian Market in Inverness is helping advance her hopes of gaining an honours degree in specialist art while providing much interest and praise from the passing public.
While studying at Inverness College UHI for her diploma in contemporary art, June Duncan had some of her work hung in a shop unit at the market provided by Highland Council as a small gallery for the college.
The 49-year-old, from Forres, said: “For the new degree course everyone had to come up with an idea for a placement project involving the public realm, and I thought that since I had staged an exhibition there before it would be nice to work with the people who work in the market.
“When the exhibition was on I used to watch the people passing by and thought it was such a nice wee place.
“I have been painting portraits of the shopkeepers, mostly from photographs and from chatting to them, people like Nancy who has the joke shop and Bob the market janitor.
“But I have also included some people who regularly pass through such as Nikki the postie with the dreadlocks, and John the busker and his dog Emily.
“I am not sure what will happen to the paintings. There will be too many for me to take away so I think they will be given to the various people who have been painted.
“I had a visit from the council’s events manager Gerry Reynolds, and he has expressed an interest in having an exhibition of the market portraits at the Inverness Highland Games in the summer.”
She has completed more than a dozen paintings since taking up residence for six weeks on March 13.
Her move in further education – on a contemporary art and contextualised practice course – was inspired by her two daughters Alannah (21) and Romara (16) going into further education too.
Mark Lomax, of Inverness College UHI, said the empty unit kindly loaned by the council was proving to be a valuable asset.
