GEORGINA COBURN ART
'Highland Clearance'
'I made the diptych Highland Clearance (40cm x 100cm) to try to process what I see happening all around me and to acknowledge the trauma felt by many people in rural Scotland today. We are currently living in the shadow of a wave. Communities from Shetland to the Borders are experiencing a deluge of planning applications for substations, pylons, battery storage facilities and windfarms, powered by greed. At times, this relentless onslaught by multinational energy companies is overwhelming. The cumulative impact of their unsustainable advance across our landscape is the source of profound distress, grief and anger.
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Unlike Hokusai's "Great Wave Off Kanagawa" (1831) which is an expression of reverence for nature, the unnatural wave I have depicted using small pieces of collaged paper and mixed media is man-made and reflects the wider global climate crisis. It is an attempt to create some order out of chaos and uncertainty, and to raise awareness about what is happening in the Highlands and in the Scottish countryside.'
Georgina Coburn
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Highland Clearance was selected for the Scottish Landscape Awards exhibition 2025 at Kirkcudbright Galleries 5 July - 28 September.
Details from Highland Clearance by Georgina Coburn (collage and mixed media 40cm x 100cm 2025.
Women in Greek Mythology
Scroll down to view this series of collage and mixed media works exhibited in 'Small Wall - 10" x 12" exhibition, Kilmorack Gallery, November 2024
Georgina Coburn 'Daphne' (2024, collage and mixed media on board 10" x 12")
Georgina Coburn 'Artemis' (2024, collage and mixed media on board 10" x 12")
Georgina Coburn 'Psyche' (2024, collage and mixed media on board 10" x 12")
Georgina Coburn 'Demeter' (2024, collage and mixed media on board 10" x 12")
Georgina Coburn 'Persephone' (2024, collage and mixed media on board 10" x 12")
Georgina Coburn 'Ariadne' (2024, collage and mixed media on board 10" x 12")
Georgina Coburn 'Andromeda' (2024, collage and mixed media on board 10" x 12")
Georgina Coburn 'Athena' (2025, collage and mixed media on board 10" x 12")
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Following my initial series of six collage and mixed media works inspired by Women in Greek Mythology in November 2024, I explored the stories of three more heroines in January 2025.
Athena, goddess of war and wisdom, is a fascinating, contradictory figure of thought and action. Born from her father Zeus’s forehead and represented symbolically by an owl, Athena is associated with intellect and the element of air. This figure of Athena reimagined, suggests a different kind of power to wielding a sword or spear. With the advent of 21st Century drones and AI technology, war has become almost an unconscious act, where killing is like gaming, simply pushing a button, with no accountability or actual human contact. Within this work I have also been thinking about ideas of defence and justice, enacted in current wars raging across the world. In such times, having a creative or imaginative space as a still point of reflection becomes an imperative.
Georgina Coburn 'Eurydice' (2025, collage and mixed media on board 10" x 12")
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My image of Eurydice changes the story completely. She is hoisting herself up Indiana Jones style from the underworld, rather than being trapped by Orpheus disobeying Hades, looking back in doubt of her following him out of the underworld. Hanging by a rope, Eurydice looks back on her relationship with Orpheus, both figures turned to stone and crumbling in a cavernous, volcanic space, not unlike our unconscious selves. It is not a space for the dead, but one for reimagining life and she is certainly not helpless. In this moment of reflection, Eurydice has the agency, resilience and skill to manage her escape.
Georgina Coburn 'Atalanta' (2025, collage and mixed media on board 10" x 12")
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According to Greek mythology, Atalanta was left on a hillside to die by her father for not being a male child. Nursed by a bear and raised by hunters, she was a mortal woman, a skilled hunter and devoted follower of Artemis. Here she appears ceremonially adorned and elevated, despite losing the race to Hippomenes, aided by Aphrodite’s golden apples, cast down to thwart her winning pace and ensure that she marries him. Hippomenes and Atalanta were later transformed into lions. My image of Atalanta and her attendant animals isn’t an attempt to literally illustrate her story. Like the collage process, the image is more about triggering threads of association. Atalanta holds apple and spear purposefully, in full possession of herself. She is an ancient, fated character but also a contemporary one, standing in a burning wilderness. Like an archetypal figure in a tarot deck, she confronts us with the possibility of resistance through self-determination.