Pinkie Maclure Self-Taught Artist and Singer

I was brought up in a small fishing town in the north-east of Scotland by an atheist mother, a talented musician who loved to sing sacred music.

She was often moved to tears by the music, but nature, the arts and science were the gods in our house.

I was a prolific child artist, drawing on old wallpaper samples in front of the telly every night, but I was later put off by a sexist art teacher and I turned to music and performance instead.

To support my music career, after 25 years of depending on low-paid jobs, I found work helping a friend in a commercial stained glass studio. It was not very creative - we simply offered the manual skills to realise customers' ideas.

However, I did start to study the history of stained glass and became disheartened by what I saw as the contemporary 'dumbing down' of this extraordinary medium. I noticed that many churches now avoid using any imagery and that fewer stained glass artists have the very particular skills required to paint images on glass. In contrast with the heady, dazzling power of figurative medieval glass, many 20th century stained glass windows had become simple blocks of cheap, coloured glass, often designed and mass-produced by glaziers, with no artistic intent behind them - their function was reduced to something purely physical; a kind of upmarket net curtain.

I decided to develop my painting, sandblasting and engraving skills to harness the spiritual power of stained glass, in order to explore big issues of today, such as climate, women's rights, addiction and grassroots activism. Instead of removing the images, I decided to change them. My references include bible stories, folklore, tabloid newspaper headlines and personal experiences. I use stained glass as a language, as they did in the middle ages.

I love the peculiar character of very old, broken windows, which have been repaired many times over the centuries. They have a particular poignancy which reminds us of our mortality and the fragility of the earth.

As a singer-songwriter, I've recorded 10 albums over 30 years and performed internationally.

For my 2023 solo exhibition at CCA Glasgow, 'Lost Congregation', I combined large-scale stained glass, 3D sound, film and live performance, to create a fictional, abandoned rural chapel, haunted by its lost congregation, to question our relationship with the land and to celebrate the way nature and grassroots activism, such as compost-making, can reclaim abandoned places.

I make large architectural installations and small, highly-detailed light boxes, easily wall-hung like glowing paintings.

Please enquire for a list of available works.