Euphoria in Scotland’s Wildlands: Flora Ann Fraser, Fine Art

Flora Ann Fraser is a Fine Art BA (Hons) student from Edinburgh. Her work focuses on collective euphoria in Scotland’s wild places. Flora is a keen outdoorswoman, wild swimmer and Munro-bagger and seeks to encapsulate the feelings which outdoor exploration and activities across Scotland’s rich environments provide, particularly when shared with friends.

We caught up with her on opening night of DJCAD’s 2026 Degree Show and asked her about her display:

‘So I have three mediums, which I’m showing today. I have ceramic pieces, which I’ve displayed on bespoke wooden stands. I have mono prints, which are framed, and I also have the paintings, which are mixed media pieces, acrylic and oil bars. They’re trying to just show joyous memories.’

Images: Jack Beal & Nick Whelan

When asked of the inspirations behind her work, Flora explained the simplicity of her guiding influences:

‘It’s basically just my life. So my work’s just when I’m not in the studio painting, I’m basically just outside where I love to be, and I just try and capture me and myself, like with friends, it’s all about people.‘

Her paintings seek to display the human aspect of Scotland’s nature, displaying lived experiences of the land and celebrating friendship against the backdrop of Scotland’s much sought after and unique natural spectacles.

‘Even though the landscape is the main focus of my work, I think it’s very important that I always show people within the landscapes, because it’s the people who make those moments unforgettable.‘

Flora has sold much of the work featured in her degree show display and numerous prints of her work, including a painting purchased by the University to feature as part of their own collection. Flora was awarded numerous prizes for her work. These include:

The Graham Lang Prize, the Delia Baillie student prize fund and the prestigious Royal Scottish Academy (RSA) New Contemporaries Award. As part of the RSA award, her work will be exhibited at their own galleries in Edinburgh next year.

As both the centrepiece of her display and the Flora’s personal favourite, Spring Equinox attracted attention from visitors, students and staff alike.

‘It’s a two-panel painting, 180 x 120 cm, and I decided to do two panels and do the faces in a lot more detail, so it can show the kind of eye-to-eye contact between the two figures in the piece, and the landscapes kind of all moving around that, quite similar to that in classical paintings.’

It is a piece born from an artistic intuition, blending multiple viewpoints and figures.

‘We were actually collecting flowers for a spring equinox theme party that my friend was hosting, so we were just down by the river, and it was a really sunny day, and it was one of the first times that I was like, “Oh, I actually really want to compose this as a painting.”‘

‘Usually, I just do it from memory or I do it from a random photo I’ve taken, but I was like, “I want to paint this.” So I had that feeling right then, and I was like, “Okay, we need to take these photos now.” So I kind of post us up in different positions, and the composition didn’t actually make sense from where we were, because the angles were all different, but I kind of blended it together and made it into one piece.’

Images: Jay Phair

When asked of her Experience at DJCAD, Flora expressed an overwhelming fondness of her time in Dundee:

‘I’ve loved my experience at DJCAD. I’m going to miss it so much. I think having like a whole community, which you can create art in, is amazing, and kind of bouncing off all the other students and tutors and stuff, and having access to all the workshops has been such a privilege. I’m definitely going to miss it a lot.’

Make sure to check out Flora’s website and her art Instagram for more of her work and any of her forthcoming exhibitions.