Limited Edition
Fine Art Giclee Prints
Limited Edition
Fine Art Giclee Prints
TROSSACHS NARRATIVES
TROSSACHS NARRATIVES
Trossachs Textiles
The Trossachs Collection is a personal exploration into the notion of home. Home involves an interaction between nature, community and warm human contact. To achieve this, the Trossachs Collection creates a conversation between Scotland's traditional past, and the landscape's contemporary present. Through an exploration and personal connection to her home environment, Orla aims to translate the environmental experience into textile designs. With a focus on colour, texture and tactility, this collection encourages similar experiences of emotions and connections for the user. Inspired by local folklore, history, music and landscape of the Trossachs National Park, these influences intertwine and result in this collection of printed and embroidered double sided blankets.
Trossachs blankets represent metaphorical nomadic homes: Encasing the user in their very own transportable textile home, which may be taken anywhere. When wrapped in a Trossachs blanket, you are immersed in your own sense of place, of home, wherever you may go.
Hello, I'm Orla, a Scottish artist often exploring the UK and Europe with my sketchbooks. While home is nestled in between the forests and lochs of the Trossachs National Park, you'll also find me hunkered down, sketching everywhere from a bustling city park in Berlin to capturing the birds hovering on the wind over the North Atlantic. I'm drawn back to capture the energy between people and place, and nature found in unexpected places. Above all, I'm looking to capture the moments where the everyday tips into something a little magical.
My work is inspired by nature, landscape, memory and the beauty found in everyday moments. Through everything I create, I aim to capture the experiences that connect us more deeply to the world around us, through a sense of curiosity and play.
Sketchbooks are at the heart of my practice, filled with observational sketches, notes and stories gathered on location. I forage for ideas through painting and writing, capturing not just how a place looks but how it feels. Back in the studio these notes and experiences develop into paintings that aim to hold onto that sense of place and wonder.
Ultimately I believe art can help people see and care about the natural world. So much of what threatens our environment happens out of sight, and it's hard to care about what we can't see. Through my own paintings and by helping others use art as a way to connect to nature, I hope to bring us all closer and inspire a deeper love for the world around us.
To help me do this, I run The Outdoor Sketchbook Collective, an online art club and community that encourages connections to nature and creativity through sketching, workshops and gentle exploration.
I also create art to share this message further, through collaborations with organisations like Hendrick's Gin, the National Galleries of Scotland, the NHS and Fib Whisky, helping them tell their stories and bring a love of nature, wonder and the magic found in everyday moments to their audiences.
Why I Create
Having spent most childhood holidays and weekends up hills or camping in tents along Scotland's north west coast (the first at 4 weeks old, in the depths of winter) it was inevitable that nature would play an incredibly influential role in my life. Spending time immersed in the outdoors is what connects me to myself, to the world and other people, and is where I believe a childhood sense of exploration, joy, care and wonder can be found, no matter a person's age.
While studying printed textiles at Edinburgh College of Art, I discovered painting and instantly fell in love with how the process made me feel. In it, I saw its potential to communicate and create opportunity to experience play, wonder and joy with others, and bring together everything I love most: being outside, painting, sharing and encouraging others to find a space for exploration and wonder in their everyday too.
Orla captures the everyday moments that connect us more deeply to nature and the world around us.
For enquiries about purchasing artwork, commissions, or collaborations, please get in touch at:
os@orlastevens.com
