“This show also includes a group of paintings of the Lammermuir Hills to the south of Edinburgh. Rae had painted them early in her career, but more recently they became the subject of a major body of paintings. This undertaking was partly prompted by the limitations on travel imposed by successive lockdowns during the recent pandemic. When travel was difficult, the Lammermuirs were near at hand.

A formidable natural barrier between the Lothians and the country to the south, they are within sight of Edinburgh. Steep and inhospitable as they are, they are nevertheless marked with lines drawn upon them by people over millennia: lines of prehistoric earthworks, of paths worn by fishwives carrying their creels from the sea at Dunbar to markets in the Borders, of sheep tracks, of trees in shelter belts and the fences and field dykes of farmers. All these lines and other patterns of human use are reflected in the paintings.”