Solo exhibition Henderson Gallery, Edinburgh.

Ancient walls and crumbling buildings, the hard-nosed practicalities of docks and harbours, disparate collections of unconsidered trifles. Astrid Trügg takes inspiration from the forgotten and disordered, the overlooked and the mundane. And yet her works are neither grim nor forbidding. It should not be forgotten that Astrid worked at one time in the field of interior design, and was indeed on the editorial staff of a leading Dutch design magazine. And with her designer’s eye for form, for colour and for texture Astrid creates works of a deep, if sometimes elegiac, beauty, works easy to live with and easy to love.

Born in Utrecht in the Netherlands, Astrid has had a lifelong passion for painting, and has studied in France, the USA and the UK as well as in her native country. Entranced on a visit to Scotland by both its land and cityscapes, Astrid moved to Edinburgh in 2003. Since then she has been a regular exhibitor in galleries throughout the UK, and currently works from her studio at Coburg House Art Studios in Leith. This area remains a constant source of delight and inspiration in which Astrid often seeks “beautiful hidden buildings touched away behind bland new build”. These she describes as “traces of what once was”, a phrase full of the frequent poignancy of her vision.

It is not so much the architectural of historical significance of these buildings that is of interest to Astrid however, but rather something that we might – though we probably should not – call more concrete: their walls. Astrid has an abiding fascination with walls, all walls, from magnificent historic facades to crumbling dry-stone dykes. Their subtle yet constant changes of hue as they respond to the quality of light, the dramatic effects of weathering and erosion, the magic of cold hard stone absorbing and then giving back the heat of the day even after the evening has come, the paradox of an aesthetic response to an object so utilitarian. Harbour walls, for example, are severely practical in their inspiration built to protect those involved in one of the harshest of trades. “They are not made to be beautiful,” Astrid says “and yet that roughness creates amazing textures and shapes.”

The word ‘textures’: texture is another important preoccupation for Astrid. “I love the textures of old walls,” she says “the history they contain. I try to find it in my work by scraping back through the paint. I build up the layers so that there is more to scrape back and more to discover. This is the reason I paint mostly on board: it gives me the ability to work back in, and find new (old) surfaces. And of course the texture of the board itself becomes part of the work. The medium I use most often is pigment mixed with hide glue. This way I can ‘brew’ my own paint, which must be heated to work with. Sometimes I add a little emulsion, or graphite, or whatever suits me at the time.”

One further thing Astrid will often include are pages torn from magazines, or scraps from newspapers. This she does with a graphic designer’s delight in the varieties of print, stressing that the design element is all, the meaning of the words nothing. To this end she will for preference use obscure or ancient publications, if possible in a foreign language, to defeat the eye of the reader and delight that of the viewer.

Yellowing newspaper fragments telling long forgotten stories, disordered apothecary bottles and bleak stretches of pitted and pockmarked masonry: this is not the language of the sublime. But led by Astrid Trügg to focus our gone on form and function, on colour, and line, and texture, we may find in them a gentler, more human beauty, the beauty of the utterly ordinary, which is, in the end, surely more than enough.

Written by Gregor Seuss, October 2008