Printmaker Raine Clarke memorialises the feeling nature gives us through her exquisite monoprints. In her Whiting Bay studio, you can see what goes into the painstaking – and experimental – process, says our writer Emily Rose Mawson.
Raine in her Studio
“You will really like Raine Clarke, lovely person”, I’m told, before I set off for Whiting Bay one Friday in May. It’s a bright morning, breezy and cool, the sea silver-grey as it claws the mile-long strip of sand that fronts the Victorian village on Arran’s southeastern coast. And it’s true: printmaker Raine’s huge smile, shining blue eyes, and animated welcome are full of the kind of all-embracing warmth that takes you straight into another world.
The setting adds to this: her studio, Underwing, is a short drive, or an energising walk, up the lane towards the golf club, where “we’re the new house, turquoise-y door, with a gravel entrance”. (Raine didn’t mention the wraparound sea views or the fields that seem to stretch for miles back inland, but that’s for you to discover during Arran Open Studios weekend). The studio itself sits at the bottom of the garden, which slopes as if to get closer to the sea.
It’s a smart wooden outbuilding and inside, with three months to go until this year’s Arran Open Studios weekend, work is evidently in progress. Samples of dried seaweed hang from rails, experimental prints in shades of vivid blue and turquoise, cockled slightly at the edges, are pegged nearby. There are glass jars containing mosaic-like pottery shards gathered on the beach, heart-shaped stones and a pencil rubbing of whale vertebrae.
The seaweed, she decided to press after finding tiny – “like filigree” – pieces during one beachcombing walk. “I couldn’t believe the detail of it, and its branches, and its almost like blood vessels – that pattern you see in nature that repeats in lots of places. I dried it and did sketches of it, and then I inked it up,” Raine explains.
Most of her prints are made in a table-top etching press, which she got – “Can you believe it?” – a month before the pandemic locked down Britain. She was living in West Lothian at the time, with grownup children away at university, and absolutely “no other responsibilities”. Sourced second-hand online, and astonishingly cheaply, the press, says Raine, was a real gift – “because I had this really intensive period of self-teaching and experimenting”. While you can do a lot of printing by hand – lino printing, for example – other methods, including Raine’s favourite, intaglio, require the weight of the press to push the damp paper into the image you have etched onto the metal plate and pick up the ink held within the lines.
The results, painstakingly intricate, are also spine-tinglingly beautiful: a whale with its unique markings, like fingerprints but acquired over time, as well as dolphins that seem to leap from the paper thanks to fluid silver leaf and pencil details (for context, check out Raine’s social media (@underwing_studio) for the awe-inspiring video she took of a pod of dolphins hunting mackerel and jumping “right next to us and all over the place” while she was out kayaking in the bay). There’s the first reduction lino print she made during lockdown – ‘Silver Linings’ – of a Japanese crane in 10 beautiful layers of ink (“I don’t know how I did it!”). They all capture memories and things Raine has loved – and that she hopes you’ll love too. Nature is the main theme, and the sea – “not all Arran-specific, but the feel of what it means to be beside the sea”.
Raine has been drawing the world around her since the year dot. Growing up on a farm in North Berwick, she was always gathering things, making things, “and I had a lot of freedom. I just went off by myself and made friends with the lambs. I think that primed me for being inventive and looking at the world. I’ve always been inspired by the natural world and looking at stuff really closely. The next natural step was drawing it.”
After training at Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen, she diverted for a decade to become a paediatric nurse, supporting children in a respite unit with creative therapies. Since moving to Arran 18 months ago, her focus has been experimenting with art and technique – work that she describes as “a kind of visual diary of all the lovely things I’ve seen, all the things that have amazed me, and just brought me alive”. The main hope, she says, in a world dominated by artificial intelligence-generated images, is to create pieces that have “heart impact”. This is partly why she’s so passionate about one-off artworks; the only digital versions you’re likely to find of her creations are printed cards.
She reflects: “It’s hard to explain why when you see something you’re just like, oh my goodness… intensity of colour, maybe, or just the perspective of that artist or person. It’s the emotion, I think, that’s loaded in ink and paint and whatever sort of expression has come from a human that I feel when I see something.”
In a nutshell, she summarises, gazing out to sea, “it’s about wonder, and just keeping wonder alive in what is quite a difficult world, with a lot of hard things to deal with, a lot of brokenness. But there is so much beauty around, and that helps me stay sane. And if that’s what you’re putting out, just to put some hope back….” It doesn’t sound highfalutin at all, I counter, when she suggests such. It’s a beautiful, from-the-heart sentiment that seems to say it all without saying much at all.
When you visit Raine’s natural-light-filled studio, you’ll find all this: happiness and laughter, joy-filled work, and blue – a spread of calming, soothing, sea-conjuring blue. “I mean, I tried other colours, I did try,” grins Raine. “But I just kept coming back to blue, so I guess that’s my thing and I just give in to it now. You’ve got to go with your heart.”
As well as her independent work, there have been collaborations, including a “really nice one” for the 30th birthday celebrations of COAST (The Community of Arran Seabed Trust), for which she created a mural as well as painted sea creature designs onto stones to auction. She also does artwork for musician and poet friends, for album or book covers and merchandise.
Today, she’s busy looking ahead to Arran Open Studios. “I’m so hungry for it now,” she grins. “I’ve been doing my sketches, writing notes, beginning the process.” What will the work be? She’s not exactly sure yet – “not everything is a success and I’m quite experimental too” – but “probably some seaweed” will be featuring. “Let’s just see what the beach washes up!”.
About Arran Open Studios
Arran Open Studios is an annual initiative incorporating painters, sculptors and craftspeople from the Isle of Arran. Launched in 2012, it operates under the umbrella arts charity the Arran Theatre and Arts Trust. This year, it takes place from 14-17 August 2026.