Keith Salmon is one of Scotland’s foremost mountain landscape artists. His work is particularly unique having evolved by inter-twining the styles of impressionism and expressionism to present a valuable personal interpretation of Scotland’s mountain landscape scenery. His work must be seen with the full sensitivity that his art brings to life.
Keith started his art career shortly after graduating from Falmouth School of Art in the UK and initially worked with sculptures. However, once he moved to Scotland he started to develop his other passion – hill walking – and from there started to paint the infinite landscapes that belong only to the Scottish mountains.
As an artist Keith has looked to develop this theme in more detail and has began to blend not only what could be very realistic depictions of the mountains when covered by fogs and mists to what is now artwork that comes from his heart – a mixture of impressionism and expressionism. As his art has evolved, he has moved from an impressionistic interpretation of the highlands and ingrained within his art his true feelings that he captures and memorizes when he is out walking on the hills, valleys and mountains that have always been beautifully associated with the romantic histories that pervade their essence. In doing so his work has moved forward to present a blend of this heartfelt expressionism within what otherwise would be a simplistic development of the art form begun over a century ago in Paris to one that is being created as a new school of art at his studios in Irvine, Scotland.
Keith’s work involves photographic and mental studies of the Scottish mountains, capturing their charms in all of the season: rain, mists, sun drenched summer days and obliterating snow storms. Due to this multitude of weathers it would be impossible for an artist to work “plain air” and interpret the scenery before him. But what is impossible to escond is the feeling that the artist must experience when at the top of a mountain or climbing a scree and facing a freezing cold wind; taking that back to the studio and converting it between acrylic paints and oil pastels into a new element of being – a story of that day on the mountainous tracks and trails that wind their way along the ridges of the Scottish highlands once tramped by historic peoples such as Rob Roy and Bonnie Prince Charlie and presented in their naked splendor – that is what Keith Salmon does best: Exchanging artistic elements for emotions, framing fleeting memories and moments on board or canvas, and in doing so immortalizing them while at the same time allowing them to be shared with everyone. Something more than just a Kodak moment!
Keith Salmon’s Scottish contemporary landscape art paintings of Scotlands’ Highlands are now carefully sought after by collectors in the UK as his production is quite limited and many an art lover as well as fellow lovers of the outdoors and in particular the Scottish highlands adorn their homes with originals and reproductions of his artwork as well as the essence of a new expression in Scottish art.