Discover the Scottish artist and musician Rory McEwen (1932-1982), one of the 20^th century’s greatest botanical painters whose luminous paintings of flowers, leaves, butterflies, and decaying vegetables breathed new life into the genre.

Rory McEwen: Nature’s Song will explore his botanical works alongside personal items showing his creative process and will include botanical paintings, a selection of sculptures and experimental paintings, alongside works in progress, correspondence, photographs, brushes, pallets and diaries.

While he is best known for his exquisite botanical watercolours, he was also a skilled musician and pivotal figure in the 1960s folk music revival movement. In his art, McEwen experimented with abstracts and landscapes, collages, glass and Perspex sculptures, and collaborated with contemporaries including Jim Dine and Joseph Beuys. The exhibition will include examples of his sculptural work, both inside the gallery and outside in the museum’s courtyard garden.

His innovative approach to botanical art harnessed the power of realism while infusing modern creativity into the centuries-old genre. McEwen’s distinctive use of light and space – floating his plant portraits off centre, focusing on specific details such as individual leaves and petals, fading to white – blurs the boundaries between botanical illustration and modern art.

In so doing, he changed the course of contemporary botanical art and inspired a whole new generation of artists.