INSTALMENTS | CHARLENE SCOTT

26 February - 28 March 2026

CHARLENE SCOTT
INSTALMENTS is a series of presentations that take place in the 'Feast Room', on the first floor of the Glasite Meeting House, the building which houses our gallery in Edinburgh. The fourteenth artist in this series is Charlene Scott.
To view a film made with Charlene Scott, please click here.

Charlene Scott (b. 1972, Edinburgh) works primarily with botanical pigments to make works on paper notable for the economy of their means and method, and yet, for all their apparent minimalism, they offer a subtle and constantly shifting visual experience as shapes and shadows come alive and dissolve from different angles and changing light.

Patterns develop intuitively or are distilled from small details observed in Scott’s surroundings and everyday life - a picket fence, a tiled floor, lines of sunlight filtered through blinds. Place is important, both in the specific site of her garden from which she gathers the flowers, leaves, roots and seeds from which her pigments are developed, and more widely in a relationship with the Scottish landscape where she has always lived and worked.

Scott trained as a holistic therapist and is alert to the healing properties of plants and botanicals, as well as their use in the traditions and techniques of natural dyers and bookbinders. Yet her work is also inherently contemporary - nodding to Agnes Martin’s radical distillation of form and Roger Ackling’s material-driven engagement with the natural world. Stitching, sewing, tending, harvesting, gathering, crushing, pouring, stirring, watching, waiting, her approach is methodical and meditative, as she puts it ‘these slow material-based processes allow my mind to wander, a kind of emptying out that creates space for quietude and wonder much like my experience of nature.’
Charlene Scott
diamond grid, 2025-2026
botanical pigments on paper
118.2 x 81.9 cm (frame)
46 1/2 x 32 1/4 in
£ 3,500.00 (framed)
(detail) Charlene Scott, diamond grid, 2025-2026

"I think of my work as a kind of affirmation of the small, extraordinary things that exist on the periphery. A celebration of the quiet and undramatic. I hope that the simplicity and subtle shifts within the work can act as a little breathing space for whoever comes upon it."

- Charlene Scott
Charlene Scott
diamond, 2025
botanical pigments on paper
118.2 x 81.9 cm (frame)
46 1/2 x 32 1/4 in
£ 3,500.00 (framed)
(detail) Charlene Scott, diamond, 2025

"The larger, folded works always stem from something; it can be a line or a shape from within a landscape. Maybe a picket fence, patchwork quilt, a tiled floor, or lines of sunlight filtered through blinds. Line, pattern and repetition holds my attention whilst also allowing my mind to gently wander."

- CS
- Charlene Scott
  pink grid, 2024-2026
  botanical pigments on paper
  112 x 76 cm
  44 1/8 x 29 7/8 in
  
  £ 3,000.00
- Charlene Scott
  furrow, 2025-2026
  botanical pigments on paper
  112 x 76 cm
  44 1/8 x 29 7/8 in
  
  £ 3,000.00
Charlene Scott
fold 16, 2024
botanical pigments on paper
53.7 x 44 cm (frame)
21 1/8 x 17 3/8 in
£ 1,500.00 (framed)

"I have come to really admire artists who have an almost devotional like quality to the work they make and especially when there is also a reduction of means. Artists such as Emma Kunz, Agnes Martin, Giorgio Morandi and Roger Ackling come to mind. Giorgio Griffas work for his directness of materials, in particular the way his rhythmical mark making is grounded through the folds in the fabric. They appear to conjure something that goes beyond the visual and that is incredibly inspiring to me."

- CS
- Charlene Scott
  fold 14, 2024
  botanical pigments on paper
  57 x 38 cm
  22 1/2 x 15 in
  
  £ 1,200.00
- Charlene Scott
  fold 15, 2024
  botanical pigments on paper
  47 x 38 cm
  18 1/2 x 15 in
  
  £ 1,200.00
Charlene Scott
bud 2, 2025
botanical pigments on cloth mounted on paper
36.1 x 46.1 cm (frame)
14 1/4 x 18 1/8 in

Folding paper, I was thinking about seasons and patterns and how everything eventually loops back again. It made sense to incorporate the dyed fragments of cotton, having gathered them slowly over the years, some shifted with iron, others crisp and clear, markers not only of the colours that have passed through the studio each year but also reminders of what will come around again through the turning of seasons."

- CS
Charlene Scott
bud 1, 2025
botanical pigments on cloth mounted on paper
30 x 40 cm
11 3/4 x 15 3/4 in
£ 1,000.00

"Using a notebook or loose sheets of paper I gradually repeat lines, making small adaptations, until the work itself leads me. When I’m ready I’ll measure and score the lines of the drawing first, then I’ll begin to slowly make the folds."

- CS
Charlene Scott
fragment 017, 2025
dye bath on embossed paper
32.9 x 25.9 cm (frame)
13 x 10 1/4 in
£ 950.00 (framed)

"The geometric works on paper are made by a process I adapted from blind embossing; by submerging paper into a warm dye bath. Once the paper has taken up all the colour I’ll lay it over a composition of shapes cut from card and begin to feel for the edges and emboss with a simple hand tool, as a way to build in time. Gradually a more confident pressure is used and the paper begins to hold a trace of these gentle impressions and reveal the shapes."

- CS
Charlene Scott
fragment 007, 2025
dye bath on embossed paper
32.9 x 25.9 cm (frame)
13 x 10 1/4 in
£ 950.00 (framed)

"My curiosity grew from a desire to build a more tangible and intimate relationship with nature and an economy of the materials I use. The process became a strategy that promoted slowness, quietude and ecological empowerment and was a deliberate attempt to ground myself in something positive and wondrous."

- CS
Installation views, INSTALMENTS: Charlene Scott, Feast Room, Ingleby, Edinburgh. Photographs: John McKenzie.
For more information and artwork enquiries, please get in touch at info@inglebygallery.com

Gallery Hours

Wednesday - Saturday, 11 am - 5 pm, or by appointment

Ingleby Gallery, 33 Barony Street, Edinburgh, EH3 6NX

This website uses cookies
This site uses cookies to help make it more useful to you. Please contact us to find out more about our Cookie Policy.

Reject non essential