Host and Guest Artists

“If the artist has outer and inner eyes for nature, nature rewards him by giving him inspiration.” – Wassily Kandinsky

Host

Past Guest Artists

Gena Brodie Robbins was awarded an MFA in Painting from the Savannah College of Art & Design in 2006 where she also held a position as a professor of foundations at SCAD, teaching drawing and design courses. She has studied at the Arts Student League in New York City and was the winner of the 2009 Florida Artist Group’s Richard Andruck Award, juried by world-renown painter, Sam Gilliam. Brodie has also been awarded, through SCAD, the New York Studio Space Residency held at the Elizabeth Foundation Center for the Arts in New York City, 2005.

Brodie has been represented by multiple galleries including dk Gallery in Marietta, GA, and is currently represented by SCAD Art Sales in Savannah and Atlanta, GA. She is also represented by UGallery.com based out of San Francisco, CA. She is widely collected and paints large-scale expressive and colorful abstract and abstract figurative works, pertaining to memory, existence, and the human condition.

Brodie recently had one of the largest solo shows of her career at the Quinlan Visual Arts Center in Gainesville, Ga., from August 12- October 2nd, 2021.

She currently works as an artist and educator, giving workshops throughout the US and the UK, and has taught drawing, painting, and mixed media art for over 25 years. View more of Gena’s work and read her full bio at brodiestudio.com

2022 Guest Artists

The first Inaugural Scottish Artist Retreat held at Brodie Castle in 2022 included award-winning UK guest artists, Alan McGowan, Ginny Elston & Jonathan Schearer, as well as Phoenix Center for the Arts Painting Director, Edna Dapo. These outstanding artists presented inspiring artist talks and informative demonstrations and workshops for all attendingretreat participants.

Take a look at some of their outstanding work and engaging videos to catch a peek at the 2022 guest Artist’s teaching style and see their creative process.

Besides receiving one on one instruction and demonstrations from award-winning artists, you will also be receiving individual and group critiques conducted in the sitting room located on the1st floor in the evenings and on various mornings in the stables. Sketches and paintings from the day’s excursions may be included for feedback and discussion. The stables will be open in the morning and the evening for you to use as your studio while residing at Brodie Castle.

Alan McGowan was Born in 1964 in Glasgow and studied for his degree at Edinburgh College of Art since when he has been a practicing artist and teacher.

His paintings have been featured at many exhibitions of contemporary figure art including; The Scottish Portrait Awards (2017), the BP Portrait exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London, the Threadneedle Prize for Figurative Art, the Society of Portrait Sculptors exhibition and The Ruth Borchard self portrait exhibition.

In 2014, McGowan was a semi-finalist in the Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the year and his work is featured in the international painting annual reviews INPA5, 6 & 7, published by Manifest in Cincinatti, USA.

His works appear in the public collections of the Royal Scottish Academy, Stirling University and Art in Healthcare and he is winner of the Wood Award (Visual Arts Scotland), the Bowie award for painting (Paisley Institute) and the Powderhall Foundry award for sculpture.

McGowan has exhibited widely throughout the UK and internationally in group shows in South Korea, Portugal, Finland, Italy, the Czech Republic, and the USA, and recently featured in the exhibition “A Bit of Brit” at the Westbeth Gallery in New York.
Working always from life, his paintings explore the tension between the inherent elusiveness of the world and our attempts to hold on to it. Seeing language itself as a vehicle for these attempts, the language of paint – color, tone, runniness, translucency, opacity, line, etc., become a second subject in tandem with the model; a parallel terrain.

McGowan also teaches figure drawing, painting, and anatomy for artists and has taught at the Royal Academy in London, The National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh College of Art, Dundee University, The Museum of London, The Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin, Leith School of Art and the Royal Collection Gallery, Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh. In 2012 he published a book of drawings “The Language of the Body” exploring the relationship between working in the life studio and the philosophical concerns of writers such as Michael de Montaigne and Proust which was named the best art book of 2012 by the about.com website. In 2017, he published "Unstill Life." Visit his website: Alan McGowan

Elston graduated from the University of Manchester with a BA (Hons) in History of Art and French in 2010. She joined the School’s Foundation Course in the same year and completed two years of the Painting Course.

She went on to gain her MFA in Fine Arts and Humanities at the University of Dundee in 2016, winning the Vanessa Bell Prize and the MFA Arts and Humanities Prize.

Elston has taught drawing, painting, and printmaking at the school since 2013, was an artist in residence at Edinburgh Academy from 2013 to 2014 and has taught with the Edinburgh International Festival and the Edinburgh Drawing School. Most recently, she was Foundation Year Programme Leader at the Sichuan Institute of Fine Arts, China, from 2018 to 2019.

Elston’s art practice is concerned with language and the materiality of paint, ontological philosophies, and the spaces in and around paintings.

Her work seeks to stage new experiences of space, by pushing and pulling flat geometric patterns and shapes through depictions of her environment. The introduction of these varying signs, symbols, colors, and languages opens up a different dimension of shifting representations. View more of Ginny’s work and read a bit more about her on her website: Ginny Eston

Jonathan Shearer studied at Gray’s School of Art, graduating with a BA (Hons) Painting and Drawing in 1993, and also at Cyprus College of Art, for the post-graduate Diploma in Painting and Drawing, from 1995–1996.

Over the past decade his work has been exhibited regularly in selected and solo shows at a wide variety of well-known galleries, including MacLean Fine Art, London; Strathearn Gallery, Crieff; and Castle Gallery, Inverness. Shearer has won a number of awards for his work, including two Royal Scottish Academy awards and the Fundacíon Valparaiso Residency, Spain. Through a process of walking, drawing and painting directly in the highland landscape, and working repeatedly in different places chosen and revisited many times, Jonathan Shearer has developed an intimate connection with the wild places of Scotland. Visit Jonathan’s Website: Jonathan Shearer

Edna Dapo

Edna Dapo is an international artist who works in Phoenix, AZ. She has been painting for over twenty five years and has won numerous awards. Her work has been selected for NEW AMERICAN PAINTINGS, Volume 70, and has graced the cover of American Art Collector (CA, V4 B2).

Dapo holds an MFA in Painting from Savannah College of Art and Design, BFA in Painting from ASU, and an Artist/Designer Diploma from Art School Luka Sorkocevic in Dubrovnik, Croatia. Currently, she is a Department Head of Painting & Drawing at the Phoenix Center for the Arts, where she has been teaching Painting, Drawing, Figure Drawing and Painting to all levels. Dapo also teaches at Mesa Community College (Drawing and Life Drawing).

A common theme for Edna Dapo’s paintings has always been the human figure and observing the human condition. She has lived in Croatia and Bosnia & Herzegovina through turbulent ex-Yugoslavian war. This experience influences her work to this day. Visit Edna Dapo’s website: Edna Dapo