Irene Watson : Contemporary Artist

Irene Watson is a Scottish contemporary artist whose practice is grounded in abstraction, material process and text-based visual language. Her work allows figural and allegorical elements to surface and recede within layered oil, wax, and sand, resisting figurative narrative while retaining symbolic charge.

Working primarily with oil, wax, and sand on linen or canvas, Watson constructs layered surfaces in which text, gesture, and mark operate together in controlled tension. Processes of erosion, interruption, and accumulation are central to the work, allowing meaning to remain provisional rather than resolved.

Her practice spans intimate paintings and large-scale triptychs intended for architectural settings, with scale functioning as a compositional and conceptual device rather than a purely formal one.

Her work engages with modernist and feminist lineages while remaining grounded in a contemporary, process-led approach to abstraction.