Scottish Artist John Stoa from Dundee

Looking back over my time as an artist.

I have been interested in art since childhood, but after leaving school took a career in horticulture, which I found to be very creative, designing landscapes, woodlands, parks, playing fields and planting up shopping precincts, highways and in the autumn planting mass drifts of daffodils and tulips. This career took me all over UK lasting 30 years. While in Darlington I joined the local art society and started to paint in oils. I submitted a painting in their annual exhibition which sold and got my first red dot. This gave me the motivation to start painting seriously most evenings and weekends. Sales in local galleries went well, so I then started to produce limited edition prints and Christmas cards from my winter landscapes of snow scenes. My horticultural career and hobby as an artist kept me very busy, as I was traveling all over UK selling paintings and prints.

However in 1992 while I worked as deputy Manager of Landscape and Forestry in Livingston New Town, the Government decided to wind up the New Towns, so I got made redundant. No problem as i now became a full time artist. Living in Scotland there is no shortage of great landscapes to capture on canvas, and in winter when the snow arrived I had plenty snow scenes to add variety. Then my gardening skills gave me plenty of flowers to capture on canvas. In the early years I used oil paints, but later on turned to watercolours and finally into acrylics.

Today I mostly use acrylics as they are fast drying and very forgiving. When one young lady, my Scottish model figure study never quite worked out, she got buried under a carpet of snow as I created a woodland winter landscape on this canvas. Several paintings follow the same path if they just do not impress the viewer.

Many artists find their main topic and continue with variations of their subject, but I find beauty in so many different places that I am forever changing topics.

However as it happens I often end up with one topic and numerous variations of the same. My Cape Gooseberry paintings are now on number 15, and my Scottish model Emily gave me so many sexy poses that I had to do a watercolour project of six different poses to find the best one for a large oil painting called Temptation. Although my gardening skills keep me in a world of brilliant flower borders full of colour, and with my allotment garden we get plenty fresh fruit and vegetables and cut flowers and I get fresh air and plenty exercise. The allotment has also provided numerous ideas for interesting paintings with dilapidated sheds, crooked fences, wild flowers and heaps of interesting garden junk. My neighbor Arthur's plot was full of pots, boxes, pallets, posts, roof tiles and flowering weeds, sorry, poppies. It may have been an allotment garden disaster, but it was an artists dream so I have now completed about ten studies of Arthur's Plot.

As we head into 2024 I see a change in direction for my style as I loosen up and create paintings with impact rather than reality. I will add new images to my blog and I welcome views from others to guide me along this new path.

My Scottish Models

At this time of year I am usually looking for snow to arrive so I can paint a few winter landscape snow scenes. However no snow is coming any time soon, so while I wait thought I would look out a few of my Scottish ladies who have modeled for me in years gone by.

Framing a Box Canvas

Box canvas, often called stretched box canvas is very popular in the art world today, as they do not need to be framed, so the artist can save the cost of framing. most galleries and exhibitions allow them unframed. However sometimes the artist may feel his painting would be improved with a frame. Box canvas do not lend themselves to normal framing systems because of their depth, so frame makers have introduced a step frame which the canvas can be fastened to, then it is the step frame that gets framed.

Winter Exhibition at Roseangle Gallery in Dundee

Dundee Art Society and Broughty Ferry Art Society are getting together for their joint Winter Art Exhibition to be held in Roseangle Gallery.

It starts on Saturday 2nd December and runs daily till Saturday 9th December open each day from 11am to 5pm with a late night on Tuesday 5th December open till 9pm. Free parking in the new large car park. Visitors are welcome to pop in and see some fantastic paintings.

Art Discounts for the Festive Season

John is happy to offer a 20% discount on all paintings and prints purchased from now till end of December. The wide variety of landscape paintings, snow scene winter landscape paintings, romantic and figurative paintings can all be seen on his website pages.

Allotment paintings

I have had two interests to pursue since childhood. I have always been interested in growing plants as I needed to be outdoors in all seasons, but then in winter I still needed something to keep me active. So painting was my perfect winter hobby. I took a career in horticulture as my day job, then painting was my main interest in evenings.

My love of growing plants was so strong that even with a big garden, I still needed more land so getting an allotment was always essential. However while looking after my allotment growing vegetables, fruit and flowers, the artist eyes were always finding interesting places that would make the perfect allotment painting. It was the untidy corner full of pots, boxes, pallets, wheelbarrows, ramshackle sheds and broken fences. So it started with my neighbor, Arthur’s plot in summer, then lets try it as a winter landscape painting, and before long where ever I went there was a perfect image needing to be captured on canvas. I have now completed nearly 30 allotment paintings, most of which are now sold, but I still have a few in the artist studio. See below and more information on my website at https://johnstoa.com/landscape-paintings-1

An Artist's Life

The Autumn Exhibition at Roseangle Gallery ran for a week showing 124 paintings, but we only sold 4. Not a great result, but then we were hit by storm force winds and very heavy rainfall with so much flooding and weather alerts for folk to stay at home, so no wonder footfall was very low.

However we keep going. My next exhibition hope was the Meffan Winter Exhibition in Forfar. I submitted two of my best paintings, Lady with a Diamond Earring and the Whisky Tasting with a fee costing £20, but they both got rejected, and no reason given.

Evening Art Classes in Dundee Autumn Session

Dundee artist John Stoa is now looking for anyone with an interest in art to come along and join his Monday evening art class. It is held in his studio at 17a Menzieshill Road starting at 7pm and ends at 9pm, with a break at 8pm for tea, coffee a biscuit and wander around the studio to chat with fellow artists and see a huge variety of paintings.

For more information check out the art classes page.

Falls of Dochart near Killin

Artists have a need to travel to seek out the best images for a good landscape painting.

In Scotland we are blessed with plenty small towns and villages full of character, rivers, lochs, the highlands, beaches along the coastline and castles everywhere. It was on such an exploration looking for the next view that I came across the Falls of Dochart at Killin. It is very well known with the best view looking upstream from the bridge. However we artists are always looking for something different so I wondered if I could get a better view down at the waters edge rather than the obvious safe one from the top of the bridge. I wanted to get close to the river as it thundered under the bridge, so I had to travel a bit up the road to gain access to the river bank, then carefully make my way down towards the bridge without falling into the water. As I got nearer the water soaked rocks got a bit slippy, but I was a bit younger in them days and had little fear. However visitors to the area got quite alarmed at this young fella scrambling over the rocks at the waters edge as it was running at full spate. Once I reached my best position I had to crouch low to get the full effect of the turbulence of the raging river. The things we artists do to get the best view!!! However after taking a few photos I managed to clamber back over the rocks to safety. Back home I had some cracking images for a great oil painting of the Falls of Dochart. We artists are always a bit critical of our own efforts and never know when to stop as the painting is finished. When down under the bridge looking up stream I noticed a young pine tree growing on top of a large rock in the middle of the river. My painting did not show this wee pine tree to good effect, so I decided to make another painting but this time in acrylics, but to show my wee pine tree as a focal point. It meant a total change of appearance for this location, but then its what we do to create variety.

The Story Behind the Painting

Arthurs Plot

Life has been very kind to me. I arrived at a very early age with an interest in drawing and painting, encouraged by my father who trained in art in Poland. Then my grannie took me in hand to show me how to grow good roses. I was hooked and eventually took a career in horticulture with art as my hobby. Things went well till redundancy loomed as the Government decided to wind up all the New Towns. I worked in Landscape and Forestry in Livingston new town, so took redundancy in 1992 and changed career to a full time artist, and horticulture became the hobby, but then I discovered saskatoons on a holiday in Canada. I got hooked on this new fruit which was unheard of in UK. Got myself some seeds and tried them out. Starting with about 10 seedlings of Smoky and Thiessen I needed an allotment to grow them so ended up at City Road allotments. Saskatoons took off and as I collected my own seeds for propagation before long I was growing them by the hundreds and selling all over the UK. However the artist in me continually saw potential paintings amongst all the dilapidated sheds, falling down fences, pallets, wheelbarrows, tubs, pots and a massive variety of plants. Arthur, my neighbour had a fantastic collection of garden debris, but the gardeners nightmare plot was the artists dream. Asked Arthur if he minded me taking a few photos. He said to hang on a bit till he tidied it up. I thought, no, I just loved it as it were in the run down dilapidated unkept condition. My first painting of Arthurs Plot in Summer was the start, but then in autumn and winter I got more ideas for further wee masterpieces. The artist brain keeps asking the question, what if this or that were to change we could come up with a massive variety of different images. Today reality in art takes a back-seat to allow our creativity to take us into unknown areas, and colour and composition become more important if they make a better image. So I just could not resist adding red flowers to the potatoes. I must now have painted a dozen images of Arthurs Plot.

Another Mild Winter

Snow never arrived in Dundee this mild dry winter so thought I would post a few of my winter landscape snow scenes just in case we forget what snow looks like.

The Creative Journey

The path through creativity is not a straight line. An artist tends to paint a very wide range of topics both to gain experience but also to find his favourite topics. Then there is the problem of style to work out. Should I paint reality, abstract or something in between. We can study numerous other artists and gain knowledge of composition, colour, drama, tone, reflected lights, which medium suits us, and how loose to finish off a painting.
Looking back over the years of my own journey, I have had numerous changes of travel as new ideas and experiences guide my progress. In childhood I just loved bright colours and this continued for many years, but as I began to mix with other amateur artists I started to feel bright colours were very unprofessional, so I slowly went into my grey period. This continued for many years till a one lady said she recognized one of my paintings in a gallery. She new it was mine as she said it was very grey. That moment changed my outlook. I went back into colour, and paintings began to sell a lot better. However my wish to improve my artwork got hampered with the need to paint accurately. If I painted a beech tree, it had to look like a beech tree and not an oak, ash or chestnut. I got bogged down with reality. It took a long time to come off that road. It was during my Loch Ard project (well over twenty images) looking for something different that I decided to paint a willow tree with bright red paint and purple and blue stems. It was very popular much to my amazement. So reality was no longer important, but it has been very hard to stay on that road as you know what things look like.

A walk around the garden

The sun came out on a bright late February day so decided to explore the garden and greenhouse to see how plants are growing and early bulbs are flowering.

Framed original art

Thought it would be a good idea to let prospective buyers see paintings in their frames so added a few photos here but more can be seen on my paintings pages

Templeton Woods on television with Amelia Fox

Templeton Woods will be the focus this week on television as Amelia Fox investigates the Templeton Woods murders many years ago.

As a kid growing up in St Marys Woods in Dundee I spent a lot of time playing in the woods, so have many great childhood memories. Many years ago I decided to paint a snow scene winter landscape in oils. So one winters day I drove up into Templeton Woods and took several pictures of the trees under a blanket of snow. I needed a big canvas for this woodland painting, but recently used a large canvas for a figure study. It never worked out so it got panted over and my young lady got buried under a carpet of snow in Templeton Woods. My snow scene winter landscape painting of Templeton Woods worked out perfectly, and you would not know that a young lady lies underneath the snow.

Festive season ends so Scottish artist gets back to work

New Scottish Beach paintings for 2023

Scottish artist John Stoa from Dundee has been busy over the festive season, so three Scottish beach landscape paintings for 2023 are Coral Beach and Taliskar Beach on Isle of Skye and another beach painting of the Silver Sands of Morar. These paintings are also shown on the landscape paintings page on the website. The Isle of Skye has always been a favourite place for John with fantastic scenery all round the island. He always comes back with plenty photos of mountains, lochs, waterfalls, harbours, boats, woodlands and clean sandy beaches. Then back to Dundee for a local landscape painting of Camperdown House from the pond which is also shown on the page of romantic paintings.