Landmarks: Border Voices By Alexander Moffat, Ruth Nicol & Alan Riach

Saturday 1 March – Monday 23 June 2025
March: Fri-Mon 11:00-15:00 (closed Tue-Thu)
April & May: Wed-Mon 11:00-16:00 (closed Tue)

This new exhibition is a celebration in paintings and poems of three great
cultural figures from the Scottish Borders – the poet and writer Hugh
MacDiarmid, the composer Francis George Scott and the artist William
Johnstone.
All three were associated with the Scottish Renaissance in poetry, music
and painting in the early twentieth century. The Scottish Borders were a
deep source of inspiration for them. Through portraits by the renowned
Scottish artist Alexander Moffat, OBE, RSA, landscapes by Ruth Nicol, RSW
and poems by Alan Riach, Professor of Scottish Literature at the University
of Glasgow, this exhibition explores their ‘favoured places’ – MacDiarmid’s
Langholm and Brownsbank Cottage near Biggar, Scott’s native Hawick
and Denholm-born Johnstone’s Selkirkshire farmland.
Paintings from the Scottish Borders Council Permanent Art Collection are
also on show – two portraits of Francis George Scott (one by William
Johnstone) and another painting by Johnstone titled ‘Ploughed Field’.
This is a wonderful opportunity to see work by three of Scotland’s
foremost contemporary artists as they celebrate three important and
influential creative figures from the past.