Wasps Studios Irvine

The Courtyard Studios - a Wasps location

The Courtyard Studios, run by Wasps (Workshop and Artists' Studio Provision Scotland), lie behind the renovated frontage facing the harbour. Looking behind, you will find a purpose-built studio complex built in the 1980s. Funding from Creative Scotland enabled WASPS to refurbish the buildings in 2010, increasing the number of studios from 13 to 17, and now housing 15 artists. Over Scotland, at the time of writing, there are 20 Wasps locations housing 798 artists.

All the Irvine studios have shop-front access and are open to the public all year round. Please feel free to drop in and speak to the artists about their work.

For the history of the older buildings along the street front, see the Harbour Street page on this site.

Wasps say:
We believe that art can inspire, entertain, educate and transform people’s lives. Artists and arts charities have the unique talent and ability to create great art that can do this. Yet many survive on low incomes and struggle to make ends meet. So Wasps was set up to provide good quality, affordable studio space to enable artists and arts charities to carry out their work.

For further information: The Courtyard Studios site (currently incomplete) lists most of the artists currently working there, but links are not clear, so we have begun a list of links below.
Any artist present when you go past will probably be happy to show you their work.

Alison Thomas creates paintings and mono-prints, exploring her interest in texture by using unusual materials such as sand, plaster, dried leaves etc - a lot of her inspiration comes from nature. (Link contains email address, but dedicated website currently inactive)

Chick McGeehan is an award winning artist who draws and paints unique artwork based on the nude figure, Scottish harbours and the built environment working in oils, acrylic and pastel.

Margaret Carslaw is often found in her Harbourside studio at the top of a ladder working on her large scales oil-based paintings. Margaret often works out large scale studies, and compositional ideas on large sheets of taped-together paper using ink, charcoal and water based mediums.