Arts Thread

Siobhan McMorran is a Scottish artist working in hand-painted calligraphy ink landscapes of the Highlands, with a particular focus on Kingussie, the Cairngorms, and Loch Gynack. Her practice is grounded in the Gaelic concepts of dùthchas, an inherited belonging to place, and cianalas, a longing for a home place, exploring embodied and non-verbal experience through mark-making. This sits within a wider interest in place attachment theory, and in art as an alternative, non-verbal language capable of holding what words often can't. As part of her process, finished paintings are often returned to their source landscapes, closing the loop between the work and the place that shaped it. She is also developing a strand of work using ink made from home-grown marigolds, extending her material practice into plant-derived dyes. Her graduate show, "Understory", brought together calligraphy ink paintings, plywood works, and a silent looped video in a spiral installation, and won the CSM Cass Art Award 2026 for innovative use of materials. Siobhan holds an MA Fine Art: Digital from Central Saint Martins, completed with distinction.