Figment: noun, ‘a thing that someone believes to be real but that exists only in their imagination’, from the Latin verb fingere which means ‘to shape’ or ‘to form’.
At the Scottish Society of Artists 126th Exhibition, 2025, Olivia Irvine was presented with the prestigious award of presenting a solo show at the Open Eye Gallery. Through the title Figment, she explores the elusive nature of memory through family stories, childhood and objects, blending personal experiences with painterly invention.
These are recurring themes in her meticulously-crafted paintings, as Olivia explains: ‘I like to paint from my imagination, some are altered memories, some arise from intense observation; they look like narratives but are improvised fictions’.
The intimate setting of Conversazione portrays two women sitting together tête à tête, as if in a serious discussion, one reaching out a hand to offer comfort. The warm interior design is homely, with a blue bowl, platter of pears and candlestick on the pink tablecloth. Against the tobacco-brown background, a shaft of light glows across their faces, but expressions are purposely smudged and omitted.
The Bloomsbury artist Vanessa Bell challenged conventional early-20th century portraiture, often painting blank faces to capture the sitter’s physical gestures and inner personality. Here too, Olivia shifts the viewer’s focus to observe this conversation, not as speech but as a shared space and silent empathy with quiet intensity.
In similar vein, Posterity presents a disparate group of figures, in a lush, floral garden rendered in Irvine’s characteristic sketchy style. The characters overlap and dissolve into one another, like superimposing snapshots from old family photographs to co-exist in a dreamlike moment of time.
Decorative architectural details, a statue and wrought-iron staircase anchor the scene while allowing it to drift between reality and imagination. Posed either alone or together, these children and adults appear restless and reflective, lost in thought. With a glimpse of vintage fashion, Posterity reads as a meditation on legacy, the continuity of inherited experience across the generations.
In many of these cool compositions, the shadowy, veiled perspective is like looking through rose-coloured spectacles. This glowing presence of the past is created with a combination of contrasting media and the artist’s own specific technique: ‘I use distemper, a pigment dissolved in glue. I like the washy, ghostly effect with oil paint on top in places – a feeling that the paintings are haunted by past marks which guide the narrative.’ – Olivia Irvine
Eduard Manet’s painting Dejeuner sur l’Herbe, (1863) was rejected by the Paris Salon due to the explicit nudity of the woman who sits beside two fully-clothed men, with a female bather beyond. As a witty homage perhaps, Harvest is a pastoral scene of a family or friends gathering for their picnic lunch on the grass.
Similar to Manet’s figures, a young man lounges languidly, flat on his back as the blonde woman reclines in relaxed manner; the young boy offers a basket of harvested fruit, while two girls sit quietly, hands on laps. At this casual picnic party, everyone looks away, still, distant – a tension between social ritual and freedom of nature, amidst grass and trees. Precise layering of paint and pigment, texture and translucency reflects a fading pattern of distorted memories with a timeless, nostalgic mood.
Arrangement unfolds as an inward-looking tableau-vivant, also heavily stained with memory. The composition hinges between solidity and erasure: the illuminated flowers counter the ghostly, almost invisible figure lurking in the darkness. Irvine’s spontaneous handling of paint – scraped, layered and reworked – lets the surface breathe as if the image is continually arriving and receding.
Colour adds to emotional depth, the crimson and emerald curtains enveloping the scene like a stage set. The childlike figure, arms behind her back, is less a portrait than a silhouette of introspection. With a stunning chiaroscuro effect, painterly film noir-style, this intimate study of seeing and being seen, is quietly compelling.
‘I see several still-life themes as a kind of theatre and the objects as characters. Sometimes the objects are invented, sometimes remembered, sometimes desired.’ – Olivia Irvine
These paintings often start with abstract mark-making from which develops a mysterious sense of place and time. Still life with Green Things is a lyrical garden scene, with a flattened 2D view of the table, chair, plates and plants; the intentional tangle of colliding planes invites the eye to wander rather than settle on a single item or the girl. A harmonious, fluid wash of blues and greens contributes to the poetic narrative. Spatial clarity is deliberately oblique, while the floral fabric, feathery leaves and shapely jug create decorative motifs. This vibrant still-life comes alive with these ad hoc objects – indeed, characters which denote absence and human traces, shimmering like an elusive mirage.
‘Bequest is to do with objects my mother, who is now 100, has – and one day may be ours. Family appears a lot in my paintings, often as children, whether as me, my sister or daughter. Characters are mutable, as in a dream, the idea that in a play, a person can play more than one character’. – Olivia Irvine
Bequest is a magnificent highlight of this solo show, not least due its large scale (169 x 190cm) almost taking up an entire wall of the Gallery. A family gathers around a dining table covered in a collection of decorative ornaments, akin to a psychological still life: an antique silver cream jug, ceramic bowls, sculptured bust, decanter and wine glasses. Loosely fragmented, partially-effaced figures are happily engaged in quiet conversation with one another, as if sharing stories and anecdotes.
These treasured possessions symbolise a lifetime of personal histories, reinforcing the idea of what is passed down a family is not only material but emotional. Olivia views mirrors and windows as ‘portals into other places and realities’ – the window here may offer a glimpse towards changes in the future. Like an embroidered tapestry of interwoven threads, this textured vision of objects bears witness to love, loss, legacy and the weight of remembrance.
To enter Olivia Irvine’s imaginative, theatrical, painterly world is to feel a tangible sense of emotional expression through our own myriad of memories. Switching from playful to poignant, dreamlike to dramatic, the underlying meaning is always authentic, truthful and heartfelt.
With thanks to Vivien Devlin for contributing this review.
