from Love Dove Studio #1: PAINTING ARGYLL

 Since we closed our Lochgilphead Studio Gallery, Love Dove Studio, at the end of September 2022, Gill and I have concentrated our creative efforts to what we call our home studio, our studio at home, our home or the Studio, depending on our emphasis at the time. The fact remains that our small home in Kilmartin, our bijou cottage, as a late lamented French friend called it, is so bijou, it struggles to hold all that we have crammed into it. That makes it a challenge, to put it mildly, when we open our living room for Gallery viewing — as when we open for Artmap Argyll Open Studios, each August, or our Easter and Christmas ‘Exhibitions’. 

Four years on from our ‘working from home’ venture, we still struggle for space, either to paint or to have a quiet evening at home away from the work environment. As a result we are constantly reimagining our surroundings, finding places to put things or deciding what we can do without to create some free space.
So it is today. Our regular ‘dogwalk’ along the stretch of the Crinan Canal from Bellanoch to Crinan, (curtailed to the stretch from Crinan Bridge to Crinan because of the threat of heavy rain), was taken up with intense discussion of detail like “So where do we put the large easel?”, and “Well that table/those chairs/those books/etc., are going to have to go!”

​Sometimes it seems that we spend more time at Crinan, or driving the 5 miles to and from Kilmartin, than we do being creative, although it is hugely inspiring. 
All of this is to say that we are re-launching this website lovedovestudio.com, or maybe I should say, re-creating our website, while — at least for now — retiring georgestewartartist.com and gillstewartart.com, and incorporating the latest work from each into our joint website, hopefully focussing our work into one ‘go to’ location. Posts such as those on Instagram, Substack & Facebook may also be posted on our weblog on this website — go to Love Dove Stories.