Norman McBeath is a photographer, printmaker and member of the Royal Scottish Academy. The National Portrait Galleries in London, Edinburgh and Canberra have over seventy of his portraits in their collections. Portraits held in the National Portrait Gallery, London can be seen here.

This photograph from a triptych, Forest Fragments, has been selected for the forthcoming Scottish Landscape Awards exhibition. Here my study of landscape shifts away from the familiar distant horizon to explore aftermath - the aftermath of today's highly mechanised intensive forestry work.

New machinery means a skilled operator with their tractor-like 'harvester' can lift a 50 ft spruce, strip off all its branches and cut the trunk into equal sized logs in a mesmerizing Samurai-like sequence. The shards of wood that are left in its wake are seen here not as simple detritus but as subjects worthy of study in their own right, offering new possible meanings and associations. This step away from everyday perception can, I think, reinforce the sense of beauty and mystery that lies in the familiar all around us.

The Scottish Landscape Awards exhibition will be showing at the Kirkudbright Galleries, Kirkudbright, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland from 5th July to 28th September 2025.

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CURRENT

AUSTRALIA: Home of the Arts, Gold Coast. Portrait of the poet Linton Kwesi Johnson on loan from the National Portrait Gallery, London. 'Writers Revealed', "Treasures from the British Library and National Portrait Gallery, London" 12th April - 3rd August 2025.

TORUŃ: Faculty of Fine Arts, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Poland. Showing with Prism Print International alongside leading printmakers from eighteen countries, 28th May - 26th June 2025

RECENT

EDINBURGH: Royal Scottish Academy, 199th Annual Open Exhibition, Royal Scottish Academy, The Mound, Edinburgh. 3rd May - 8th June 2025

EDINBURGH: Exceptional Subjects, a collaboration with Melissa McCarthy, Studies in Photography Gallery. 5th April - 3rd May 2025

GDAŃSK: Academy of Fine Arts, Gdańsk, Poland. Showing with Prism Print International alongside leading printmakers from eighteen countries, 26th March - 3rd April 2025

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