Decades
Victoria Crowe’s exhibition Decades was at The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, from 31 July–30 August 2025. Spanning six decades, Decades offers both a reflective and forward-looking perspective on an artist whose vision remains unwavering yet responsive to the world’s shifting tides. Rooted in themes of continuity, memory, and transformation, the exhibition reveals the enduring resonance of Crowe’s connection to place. Crowe’s landscapes are far more than depictions of terrain; they are poetic spaces imbued with metaphor and meaning. From her early years at Kittleyknowe with the solitary shepherd Jenny Armstrong, to the luminous canals of Venice and the elemental light of Orkney, Crowe’s paintings speak of ephemerality, stillness, and an intimate awareness of time’s passage.
“There’s a sense in which Crowe’s paintings are always about what is beyond sight. Her shimmering snowscapes and firey sunset trees are never illustrative, they are always about something more, portals into a realm of ideas, feelings, memories. She has relished the chance to paint portraits because of the opportunities to discuss ideas with her subjects, people like psychoanalyst RD Laing, physicist Peter Higgs, medical scientist Janet Vaughan, who was part of the first medical team into Belsen. There is a rigorous, questing intellect in her work, a drive to understand some of life’s biggest questions.”
Podcast with Victoria Crowe and Christina Jansen, The Scottish Gallery
Interview filmed with Victoria Crowe for Decades exhibition
Film made by Kenneth Gray
Decades, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, August 2025