Kayla Spence is a 23 year old painter living in Edinburgh after recently graduating from Gray’s School of Art with a BA(Hons) Painting in 2024.

Spence’s work navigates the delicate space between abstraction and representation of landscapes, in particular the hillscapes of Scotland.  They are drawn to the isolated nature of the land with intricate and complex structures. Through drawing and painting they depict the hills in a loose manner, seeking to reveal how their internal narrative shapes the imagery and how the landscape is perceived. 

Their work starts with an image but is reshaped through memory and recollection of the landscape. Their practice depends largely on intuition to lead the direction of a piece, painting quickly in thin layers to mimic sketching through expressive, instinctive mark-making. Their palette; organic and muted,  reflects the landscape and is an important element of creating the atmosphere of the painting. Varying scale and composition is used to shift the imagery towards abstraction as it becomes confrontationally close and intimate or isolated and still. 

Having grown up in Scotland, Spence uses imagery of Scottish hillscapes to unravel themes of sense of place and self. These places remain unmoved yet ever changing, reflecting the tensions of inner dialogue surrounding familiarity and the unknown.