Mistress of Line

As we all go charging towards Yule mayhem we’re delighted to announce we’ll be publishing Lorna Miller’s political cartoons from January. So this seems the ideal time to show you lovely people this profile of her by Phantom Power – as she discusses working as a woman artist in Scotland, her experience of Lithuania’s struggle for independence and the importance of art in politics. Follow her @mistressofline and here.

Tags:

Comments (5)

Leave a Reply to Alf Baird Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.

  1. Doreen Milne says:

    Excellent. Loving the wee bit of Northern Soul as well. Happy Christmas to all of you at Bella, Mike, wishing you a healthy and prosperous 2016. Keep up the wonderfully diverse work. 🙂

    1. Thanks Doreen – Phantom Power’s film of Lorna’s work probably epitomisies what we’re trying to do – collaborations and profiling great folk like Lorna. Glad you like it, sometimes we feel too diverse…

  2. Alf Baird says:

    Great stuff Lorna. Reminded me about what Estonia did after independence. Amongst other things they reintroduced as a top priority direct daily shipping/ferry links with Sweden and Finland to get trade and travel flowing again with what were their historic trading partners. Trade (and travel) within the former soviet empire was highly suppressed by comparison. Its no accident that two thirds of Scotland’s ‘trade’ is today oriented to rest UK and our main ports have been left to rot under the union; it is not so long ago that Scotland’s trade and travel (and language, laws,culture etc) was heavily oriented (75%+) towards Europe and Scandinavia. Maybe Scotland needs to do what Estonia (and Lithuania and Latvia) did – i.e. reinstate our ‘natural’ trading links!

    1. Lorna Miller says:

      Thanks Alf, that’s really interesting, I didn’t know that. I have just seen that there is an artist’s residency in Lithuania that has working connections with other Nordic countries. This is so great to see as the arts were very heavily suppressed as well. Many of the crafting traditions have flourished and my Lithuanian friend I met in Hastings has gone back to Lithuania to continue her textile art studies. I think Scotland should definitely also cultivate these sorts of connections with the Baltic and Nordic countries. I hope to do a bit of that myself in the coming years. All the best for 2016!

  3. Phantom Power says:

    Thanks to those who got in touch about the image of naked woman riding a reindeer. It’s Lorna’s fine work and appears at end of doc. The image is a reference to Godiva and has featured in art for several hundred years.

Help keep our journalism independent

We don’t take any advertising, we don’t hide behind a pay wall and we don’t keep harassing you for crowd-funding. We’re entirely dependent on our readers to support us.

Subscribe to regular bella in your inbox

Don’t miss a single article. Enter your email address on our subscribe page by clicking the button below. It is completely free and you can easily unsubscribe at any time.