Heather McAlpine
COASTAL ABSTRACTION | COLOUR & ATMOSPHERE | SEA & LIGHT
Heather McAlpine is a Scottish-born artist based in St Ives, creating atmospheric paintings shaped by coastlines, colour and the shifting energy of the sea. Her work sits between abstraction and landscape, drawing on memory, movement and place rather than direct representation.
After studying Fine Art at the University of East London, Heather completed an MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art in 1995. Her practice later developed in Vancouver, where the wild coastline of the Pacific North West, the Rocky Mountains, glacial lakes and reflected horizons became important influences. Since returning to the UK in 2015, she has lived and worked in St Ives, where the Cornish coastline continues to shape the rhythm and atmosphere of her paintings.
Working primarily in acrylic, Heather builds her surfaces through layers of colour, mark-making and repeated reworking. Brushes, rollers, squeegees and other tools are used to create and reveal depth across the painted surface, allowing energy, movement and light to emerge gradually. Colour is intuitive and expressive, often beginning with a saturated ground before developing into fluid, atmospheric compositions.
Wild swimming has become a vital part of Heather’s process. Immersion in the sea gives her direct access to changing water, weather and light throughout the year, from the colours of St Ives beaches to the softening presence of haar, the Scottish word for coastal sea mist. These experiences feed back into the studio, where the paintings carry a sense of tide, horizon, air and emotional memory.
A member of both the Newlyn Society of Artists and St Ives Society of Artists, Heather has exhibited across the UK and internationally, with recent exhibitions in St Ives, Cornwall and beyond. Her work brings together discipline, instinct and a deep connection to the natural world.
Heather McAlpine’s paintings are quietly immersive, full of movement, atmosphere and feeling. They do not simply describe the sea; they hold the experience of being near it, within it, and changed by it.
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