‘From the Forest to the Forge’
by Lachlan Goudie
The Scottish Gallery, Dundas Street
30 October to 22 November 2025
For over 15 years Lachlan Goudie has been drawing and painting in extraordinary industrial locations across the United Kingdom. From shipyards on the River Clyde, to blast furnaces in Wales and high-tech Satellite manufacturing laboratories in Portsmouth, he has found creative inspiration in the unlikeliest of studios.
Over the years these visits to engineering sites, factories, harboursides and mines have enabled him to produce hundreds of drawings, paintings and prints. When viewed together these images constitute an unusual archive; a picture history of modern British industry. A story of national achievement, pride and technological innovation.
Lachlan Goudie said: “I’ve always been fascinated by industry as a painting subject. Growing up in Glasgow in the 1980s, my father described the days when the River Clyde bustled with ships and shipbuilding.
“But when I went to see for myself, the River was all but silent. So I began to draw the archaeology of a dying industrial landscape along the Clyde, desperate to re-capture what I had missed.
“In time I managed to gain access to the BAE shipyards in Govan and Scotstoun, the last two major yards surviving on the Clyde and my first visits coincided with a resurgence of shipbuilding activity.
“I was the only artist permitted on site to document the construction of Britain’s vast naval flagships, the Queen Elizabeth Class aircraft carriers, and the craftsmen and women involved in that project.”
Lachlan Goudie’s experiences on the Clyde motivated him to seek out other locations that might contribute to a portrait of working Britain.
He added: “Over the course of more than a decade I have made a painting pilgrimage to, amongst other places, the UK’s deepest mine in Yorkshire, one of the world’s largest slate quarries at Dinorwig in Wales, the country’s most important oil refinery and a steel furnace the size of St. Paul’s Cathedral.
“At each extraordinary site I have found myself drawing rarely documented manufacturing processes, intricately assembled products and a workforce who often identify closely with the history and the economic importance of the jobs they do.”
Goudie is not the first painter to find themselves enthralled by both British industry and the countryside. Over the centuries there have been many celebrated artists who saw no contradiction in taking their inspiration from nature as well as the country’s manufacturing landscape, the factories, forges and awesome engineering sites that built the modern nation.
Pastoral painters like JMW Turner, Stanley Spencer and Dame Laura Knight produced a range of responses to the story of British industry, from social critique to full blown celebrations of the industrial sublime.
Lachlan Goudie added: “Many of us treasure the idea that we are a pastoral nation, but modern industry and nature are portrayed as being in perennial conflict. The legacy of heavy industry and the environmental pressure this creates, has placed them at odds with one another.
“As an artist, however, I find both subjects equally compelling. And through the course of my work I have discovered that natural and industrial landscapes share certain characteristics.
“Sublime scale and intricacy are unexpected components of both environments. ‘From the Forest to the Forge’ will include many works inspired by woods, trees, and the wonders of natural engineering.”
In many cases, Goudie’s work has borne witness to the end of an industrial legacy and the environmental impact this represents.
His paintings document the last days of steel production at Port Talbot and Redcar, the changing skyline of Glasgow as ‘Titan’ cranes were demolished and replaced, whilst on the northeast coast at Hartlepool, he has charted the dismantling of immense offshore rigs, monumental structures that once defined the North Sea Oil boom.
On other occasions he has been able to record the resilience of steel rolling at Dalzell (the last surviving component of the immense Ravenscraig steel works) and the advance of innovative new technologies, at the Airbus space and satellite manufacturing labs in Portsmouth and Stevenage.
His creative relationship with British industry helped inform the making of two BBC documentaries; ‘The Colours of the Clyde’ (2014), which explored the work of Stanley Spencer in the shipyards at Port Glasgow during WWII, and ‘Awesome Beauty – The Art of Industrial Britain’ (2017), which investigated the legacy of British artists who, like Goudie, were inspired by industry.
This exhibition will, for the first time, bring together the complete range of works produced during his fifteen-year painting pilgrimage through Industrial Britain. The display will also include drawings and paintings produced in the woods of the Scottish Borders and in Dorset.
