Tina Scopa

Tina Scopa is an artist based in Fife. She views plants and soil as subjects of art, but also as creative media. Tina has worked with the Living Field on several occasions including Open Farm Sunday and the Royal Highland Show.

She completed her degree course in Fine Art at DJCAD – Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, Dundee. Here are some photographs of her work.

Exhibitions

Tina’s current exhibition is in St Andrews, 17-30 April 2023, Upstairs at J & G Innes, 107 South St.

Tina has exhibited at The Stables Gallery at the Centre for Stewardship, Falkland in Fife [1]. Her show ran from 15 December 2019 to 31 January 2020.

On display are  some plant prints in which untreated specimens have been pressed onto paper to reveal their intricate form, in some cases revealing colour not usually visible, and extended techniques in which the pressings are augmented using graphite or ink. Examples of her pottery are also on display.

The title – Makdome – is an old Scottish word “found in writings by  Agnes Arber on Goethe’s plant studies. Agnes was the first woman fellow of the Royal Society. She wrote Goethe’s Botany (1946) and The Natural Philosophy of Plant Form (1950) where she makes reference to makdome, meaning form.”

Tiny will be present at the show but if you want to meet her personally and learn about her methods, it would be best to contact her first, links via her web site [2]. Her dissertation is viewable at art.earth [3].

Degree Show

Tina began working with the Living Field in 2017 while still based at DJCAD. She held a workshop at Open Farm Sunday in June and wrote and article on Edaphic Plant Art for this website (link below).

Here are some photographs of her space at the DJCAD degree show in 2018.

She has since been preparing exhibitions for An Tobar on Mull and for Dundee Art Society (images on this page) and has been interviewed by ArtPlantae [4] who published an extended Q&A session about her work, including her links with the Living Field, on 24 July 2017 under the heading Plants that draw themselves.

The Living Field looks forward to a productive collaboration.

An Tobar, Mull, March 2018

One of Tina’s previous exhibitions was held at An Tobar, a cultural centre on Mull, sited in Victorian age school buildings and ‘open to artists, performers and audiences all year round’.  The exhibition ran for nearly a month in March 2018. Below are Tina’s photographs of the exhibition space.

The exhibition was brought to wider attention by ArtPlantae, in a post which asked the question: Can contemporary art reconnect society to the natural world?

Some of her long, printed scrolls are visible, as are a selection of framed plant prints. But also shown in the An Tobar panel (lower left) is the shape of a plant transferred to a block of hard material, the result almost fossil-like.

The Living Field appreciates the way Tina  takes some very common plants – most would call them weeds – and creates a lasting impression of their individual structure and colour. Plants as individuals, not just things to be sprayed.

Roseangle Gallery Dundee 2017

Tina exhibited at Roseangle Gallery in Dundee, and we continue these pages with some images from her exhibition which ran between 14 and 20 August 2017 and was titled Plant Prints and Earth Paintings.

From an exhibition by Tina Scope at Roseangle Gallery Dundee 2017

Further pages on this web site

Contact and links

[1] The Makdome exhibition is at the Centre for Stewardship, Falkland Fife and runs until 31 January 2020.

[2] Web site: tinascopa.com or http://tinascopa.wixsite.com/website

[3] Her page on art.earth gives a link to her dissertation in which she discusses her influences. Erudite and valuable beyond the art world.

[4] Interview with ArtPlantae under the heading Plants that draw themselves.