Featured Artist: Consuelo R. Servan

Being Azul is a series of unique screen prints and mono screen prints by Glasgow-based artist Consuelo R. Servan. The works explore sensation and memory.

 

More than a personal remembrance of summer and the southern European sky, calor & water, the work gestures toward something universal just beyond that; an out of the ordinary moment when the blueness lifts us and we can't help but feel lighter.

 

"The heat (calor) makes the difference… It makes you change habits, if not you can't handle it. These summer habits bring pleasure and a sense of joy, repeating them every year…

 

Every summer I arrive with a longing for warmth and simply for being - just being. For breakfasts in the shade, always with melon. For early morning walks to avoid the heat, gazing at the sky as it stretches out, clear and cloudless. For working, drawing, sewing, or thinking. During the hottest hours of the day (cánicula), lunch and siesta. And in the afternoon, the swimming pool - water, water, water - sun and conversations, with the prickly pears, the olive trees, and the sunset that flares up before it falls, giving us a breath of relief.

 

Prickly pear cactuses (chumberas) are everywhere in the south of Spain, and for me they are part of my identity, my cultural background that is the way I spend my summers. Azul & Chumberas, two separate entities converging: the azul, soft or fluid blue, as it can appear, and the prickly pear, sharp and present. Both are alive and combining forces, both are resilient in their own way."

 

Consuelo R. Servan is an artist born in Extremadura, Spain, in 1970. Based in Glasgow since 2012, she has refined her screen-printing practice since arriving in Scotland. Originally trained in sculpture at the Complutense University of Madrid, she later completed an MRes in Creative Practice at the Glasgow School of Art in 2018. At that time, inspired by the botanical growth patterns of prickly pear cactus, she created large screen prints on fabric that functioned as sculptural forms.

 

Her most recent exhibition, held at Proyecto Glocal in Madrid in 2025, brought together works on paper developed over the previous ten years, all inspired by prickly pears. Her work distinctively references the natural world, paying attention to changes in the environment that have the ability to expose and embody human emotions. Since moving to Scotland, she has grown a strong evocative component in connection with the identity and biodiversity heritage of her home country.

 

Servan's work has been exhibited at Crawford Gallery (Cork), San Jorge Art Centre (Cáceres), La Casa Encendida (Madrid), and ATA Gallery (San Francisco). In 2007, she was awarded the Francisco de Zurbarán Fellowship in Artistic Creation by the Government of Extremadura.

 

Alongside her studio practice, she works as a Community Artist and Educator, creating welcoming spaces where people of diverse abilities can connect, build confidence, and discover their own creative voice.