Chantal Leimbach used The Grampian Club photos and images she shot herself in Austria to inspire her contribution to the River Deep Mountain High exhibition. Chantal looked for textural similarities & differences in the images and explored this in her paintings.
Saudade by Chantal Leimbach
Acrylic on canvas board
“When I first looked through the Archive collections, l was immediately drawn towards the old photographs of the Scottish mountaineering group The Grampian Club. The pictures instantly reminded me of the Alps. After going home to Austria over the holidays, I visited the mountains in the way l usually like to do: I went snowboarding. The Grampian Club photographs led me to actively appreciate the mountainside, taking pictures and trying to capture textures and shapes that are otherwise easily overseen. I looked at both the pictures I took and the ones from the archive to find visual opposites and likenesses, subsequently exploring these textures in my paintings.”
Chantal Leimbach is a sculptor and mixed media artist in the second year of a degree in Fine Art. After finishing a carpentry apprenticeship in her home country of Austria, she came to Scotland to study at DJCAD.
River Deep Mountain High was an exhibition in the University’s Lamb Gallery to mark the Year of Coast and Water curated by Archive Services. Artists, designers and creative writers were invited to respond to the University’s rich archive, museum and rare book collections on the themes of rivers, seas, coasts and mountains. Original photographs, journals, plans, models and specimens relating to whaling, the River Tay, the natural world and mountaineering inspired jewellery, artwork, sculpture, poetry and much more.