Tatha Gallery is very proud to present “CONFLUENCE” : an Exhibition of the works of Marian Leven and Will Maclean. A tribute, a recognition in the East of Scotland of the work of two artists who have spent 50 years exploring, developing and forming a 21st century language to convey both the solid and transitory nature of Scotland: its cultural histories and physical existence, past and present. Here there is a natural confluence of minds and memories, the coming together of ideas and cultures and the meeting of East meets West. This exhibition is a blend of many compounds, of conceptual questioning of identity, both culturally and personally. In 1962 Marian, from Auchtermuchty in Fife, and Will, from the Highlands by way of Inverness, met at Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen. They have been together ever since. They live nearby, in the family home in Tayport, where each has a studio – although at opposite ends of the house. They work quite separately, only looking at each other’s works when invited. Their bond is one of mutual appreciation and respect, untainted by ego. Marian is concerned with the Scottish Landscape , the Seascape that surrounds it, and the weather that envelopes both. Her affinity is to the North, a feeling of belonging expressed and explored through the medium of paint, in imagery that is visceral, and passionately abstracted, a coalescence of emotion and energy. Will has for many years plotted a course that navigates through the histories and mythologies of the Highland and Island peoples, woven in with his own experiences of the sea, and those who sail upon it, and take a living from it. The work is often constructed from found objects, painstakingly re-invented and re-purposed, to create pictorial songs that lament the gradual fading out of an increasingly marginal seaward-looking Gaelic culture. Although the vocabularies remain marvellously and refreshingly different, here is indeed a confluence here: of concerns; sensibilities; memories, and people.