A north-east artist whose father was a fisherman has used her lifelong love of the sea as inspiration for her latest exhibition.
Jen Stephen – who now lives in Stonehaven – will graduate from Robert Gordon University with a painting degree next month.
For her final-year exhibition at Gray’s School of Art, the Inverallochy-born artist chose to focus on abstract objects from the sea.
Taking inspiration from a visit to Orkney last year, the former oil and gas worker based several of her exhibition pieces on photographs she captured of an abandoned shipwreck.
After leaving her job at offshore giant BP, where she worked for more than 30 years, she decided to pursue a long-standing interest in painting.
The 60-year-old said: “I dabbled in painting for more than 20 years but after I stopped working I wanted to do the degree so enrolled in a series of Gray’s short courses and it went from there.
“My father and grandfather were fishermen so I’ve always been interested in the sea. It seemed natural that I would focus on it for my final year exhibition.”
As well as the works inspired by the shipwreck, the exhibition also features pieces based on the increasing non-biodegradable mass of waste and rubbish in the North Pacific Ocean.
The Aberdeenshire artist said: “The north pacific ‘garbage gyre’ is a combination of both natural and man-made forces which has become a vast receptacle for society’s discarded indestructible plastic waste.
“Whilst larger items like plastic bags, net floats and detritus from commercial fishing litter the surface, like an iceberg nine tenths of this huge swirl of plastic comprises billions of tiny plastic nodules which float below the surface, barely visible to the naked eye.
“My fascination is in part due to the unbelievable scale of the gyres and a sense of horror at the inadvertent casualness in which we leave this kind of mark on the planet.”