On the 17th of May our Lower Sixth Art students spent the weekend at Hospitalfield House in Arbroath, creating their own work inspired by the art that they observed in the house. They also visited the V&A in Dundee and the 2019 Degree Show at the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design.

Read on to find out more about the trip from Elise E, one of our L6th Art students.

Upon our arrival, we were all surprised at how beautiful Hospitalfield was in real life. It was almost as if we had moved home from home as the house’s exterior resembled a castle, reminding us of Fettes. We were given a warm welcome from Scott, a key staff member at Hospitalfield, who kick-started our exploration of the house by showing us our rooms for the weekend.

Soon after, we all gathered in the Picture Gallery where we learned about the Arts and Crafts movement from the Director of Hospitalfield, discovering the influence that it had on the remodelling of the house. The room’s interior was inspiring; it was filled to the brim with beautiful paintings, artefacts and carvings. Something even more fascinating was the amount of hidden doors that we found throughout the house, two of which were in the picture gallery.

Following this, we moved through to the dining room where we enjoyed a delicious meal of lasagne. It is worth mentioning that the food was a real highlight for many of us on the trip, especially considering that all meals were vegetarian. After dinner, Scott took us outside to see the large art studios and some artwork that had been created by a previous resident artist. We then retired to the common room for a short while; we played some music, socialised and reflected on our first day at Hospitalfield House.

We used the following day to create our own art inspired by the house and its contents. Scott gave us a tour of the house, showing us the significant rooms and artworks which we later used as inspiration for our own work. Our observations ranged from the animals that we could see in paintings to the patterns on the carpet. Being given the opportunity to work individually on our own ideas was very enlightening and gave us time to think about how we could take our projects forward in the future.

Later that day, after another delicious vegetarian dinner, we continued working in the studios before presenting our artwork to the group. It was amazing to see how different everyone’s pieces were and where their thought processes had taken them. Fuelled on hot chocolate and homemade shortbread we then celebrated our final night by playing a game of hide and seek in the house.

On Sunday, we travelled to nearby Dundee where we visited the Dundee College of Art Degree Show. It gave us an insight into what it would be like to study at an Art College and we all loved seeing the different forms of art exhibited. While in Dundee we also found time to visit the new V&A Museum.

The trip was hugely beneficial in developing our creative and independent learning skills and we plan to all use these new found skills in our future art projects. On behalf of all of the L6 artists, we would like to thank Miss Hare for organising the trip and all of the members of art staff who looked after us!

To see more photographs from the trip, please head here.

Report by Elise E

Photographs by Rose B