Jane Hyslop works across art and design making artists’ books and works on paper. She combines natural and human histories investigating the points of tension where these different worlds meet. Place and identity are vital within her work and subject matter is often sourced in her native Midlothian. She develops these themes through intensive research, observational drawing, reading, topographic study and material experimentation brought together in works which visually convey narratives and detail findings.

The works in this exhibition explore specific locales, for example Dalkeith, where Hyslop was brought up, Edinburgh, and further afield. Key works which focus close to home include DHS remains and The Orangery, Dalkeith then Edinburgh, a visual handbook. The latter laying the foundations for a special edition, The Gardens I which was created in 2015 when Hyslop was invited artist at the annual exhibition of Visual Art Scotland as a site-specific study of Princes Street Gardens, Edinburgh.

In 2016 she was asked by the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh to make work for the exhibition After the Storm, Part I which explored the aftermath of Cyclone Andrea that swept across Scotland in 2012. The project investigated what happened to the landscape hit by the storm and explored the positive impact of storms in rejuvenating landscapes, maintaining species and structural diversity within an ecosystem. After the Storm V; Gore Glen, after the storm and sunlight, after the storm are some of the works made for this exhibition which combine drawing, formats and materials to underpin research and concepts.

Involvement with the project Imprints of the New Modernist Editing was the catalyst for her most recent work The Oak Tree: a tribute to eternity which extends her interests to respond to a literary work, Orlando, A Biography by Virginia Woolf. Hyslop’s work, comprising a series of drawings and pochoir prints that come together in a limited-edition artist’s book span over 700 years. The Oak Tree weaves historical and contemporary fact with fiction and marks the pivotal point at which we now find ourselves in the face of climate change and declining biodiversity. Taking the form of an imagined visual edition of the manuscript the eponymous character writes throughout the novel it follows Woolf’s groundbreaking novel in drawing attention to the very moment of the present, while urging us to look to the future. The artist’s book includes an introduction and notes written in collaboration with Professor Bryony Randall and was launched alongside an exhibition of the complete set of drawings and prints made for the work at the Fruitmarket Artists Bookmarket, Edinburgh in February 2024.

Hyslop’s work is held in many collections including Yale Center for British Art, Tate Library Special Collections, V&A National Art library, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art Archive and National Library of Scotland.

She currently lectures in Art and Illustration at Edinburgh College of Art, The University of Edinburgh.

To view more works by Jane Hyslop, visit the website of her work. You can also view the exhibition archive for The Oak Tree: a tribute to eternity at Fruitmarket. Find out more about Imprints of the New Modernist Editing here.

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