Product Details
Original framed artwork by Liz Rowland
Materials: Oil paint and oil pastels
Painting Size: 29.7 x 42cm (12 x 16.5 inches)
Framed Size approx: 39.7 x 52cm (15.6 x 20.5 inches)
Date of Artwork: 2025
Location of Signature: Bottom right corner
FRAME CHOICES: Oak with mount, Putty wood with mount, White wood with mount, Black wood with mount
Please note: Our framers are recognised by the Fine Art Trade Guild for their quality because the custom frames have tightly pinned corners, and are made from precision cut wood in England, made bespoke for each order. All our frames are glazed with our Clarity+ Perspex. It's cut from the highest quality acrylic sheet that's both crystal clear, but also safe and filters out 99% of UV light to protect the artwork.
Read more about our FRAMING WORKSHOP here
STORY
A collection of new paintings by Edinburgh based artist and illustrator Liz Rowland.
A graduate of Falmouth School of Art, Liz Rowland's work explores and observes everyday life, focusing on the small and pleasing details to be found. With the energetic and expressive observational style she is known for, her work has graced the pages of many magazines and publications from Vogue to Thames & Hudson.
For this new collection of original works for The Shop Floor Project, Liz has created a series exploring rural life; from the cockle women of south Wales to farm-life in Lancashire and the dogs she meets whilst on coastal walks near her home in Edinburgh.
The Cockle Women are a series of paintings that celebrate the traditional way local seafood has been harvested for centuries. At the height of the industry in the 19th Century, hundreds of women, dressed in flannel gowns with their donkeys and wicker baskets, could be seen on the sandy flats at low tide along the south Wales coast, gathering cockles.
When Liz Rowland lives in this area she was commissioned to illustrate a book about seaweed and the history of the cockle women. "I loved spending time studying these amazing women, their layers of heavy clothes and weather worn faces. I wanted to explore these drawings further for this collection".
The resulting Cockle Women paintings are a series of large, statuesque figures that appear almost like modernist sculpture. They have a permanence to them, a feeling of weight and a sense of history. The fluid faces and naive placement of features recalls the work of Rose Wylie, another artist who delights in championing the everyday.
The details in the clothes are wonderful; buttoned shirts, head scarves, striped ticking trousers are all painted using a colour palette echoing the naturally dyed clothing, rusty oranges of buckets, copper pans and black boots.
The Farm Scene paintings are inspired by Liz's visits to her extended family who are part of the farming community in rural Lancashire. "My visits here have brought me a lot of joy over the years and it feels like stepping back into a different world. With multiple generations of families living in the same small area it can be chaotic, but people are kind, hard working and laugh easily. The smells are earthy, tools are well loved and cared for, meals are home cooked and comforting."
The Farm Scenes celebrate this way of life in beautiful detail; rows of vegetables, towers of corn and vines, chickens roaming free, farmers at work, baskets overflowing with apples, sheepdogs patiently waiting.
And dogs are a recurring theme within Liz Rowland's work and she paints them with such a skilful hand. Inspired by her own dog, Blue, a labrador-collie cross, Liz also paints and draws the canine characters she sees on her walks along the Edinburgh coast.
Painted with energetic brush strokes, these animals are brought to life through extraordinary details; the different textures of fur, pink tongues, wet noses, knowing glances, and restful poses. Whether poised for action, panting, resting or alert - there is the most incredible observation throughout Liz Rowland's work.
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