Her artwork has been made into best-selling jigsaws and sitting in Ailsa Black’s studio it’s easy to see why.
We are surrounded by paintings and prints of cartoon-style animals and people illustrated in vivid colours, the largest of which is a glorious harbour scene featuring haughty seals and bobbing boats.
The ground floor of Ailsa’s seaside home at Carsethorn has been converted into her workspace, the ever-changing light on the Solway outside the window a ready source of inspiration.
Chatting over a coffee, it turns out that although the soft-spoken artist has spent almost all her life in Scotland she was actually born in Ireland, Ballymoney in County Antrim to be precise – the home town of five-time Isle of Man TT world motorcycling champion Joey Dunlop.
“My dad Thomas – he was known as Muir – was working for a forestry company at the time,” Ailsa tells me.
“His dad was a ship’s engineer in the merchant navy and his family was traced back to the Isle of Lismore off Oban. His people were Lamonts who had to change their name when the clans were broken up after Culloden.
“That’s what I was told – they were told they could not be clans so they all became Black, a deliberately sombre colour. That’s why there are so many Blacks and Browns in Scotland – they had to change their surname from their true clan name.
“My mother was Margaret Hendry and she was born and brought up in Fordyce, a little village near Portsoy in Aberdeenshire.
“Apparently a French ship wrecked offshore and this sailor called Henri survived and over time the name became Hendry.
“I have no idea when this was supposed to have happened but it was in the days you did not go back.”
There’s a tinge of sadness in Ailsa’s voice as she explains how she was only three when her father died in 1972, aged 42.
“He had cancer and my mum was left with four weans,” she says quietly.
“I can’t really remember much about him, it’s such a shame.
“He was a great sailor and was out sailing the day I was born.
“That’s what guys did in those days.
“My mum was a primary school teacher and had to go back to work.
“My dad had got a job as a forestry manager and we had not long moved over to Dumfries and Galloway.
“They were planting like mad in the 1970s and my dad was overseeing all the work.
“Then they made him redundant and he got cancer – my mum never got a pension or anything.”
Ailsa smiles at the memory of attending Hightae Primary School where her mum was her teacher for four years.
“Mum was a keen artist and I remember her painting when I was wee,” she laughs.
“She used to try and get me to sit still so she could draw me.
“But at school I could not get away with anything!
“After Hightae I went to Lockerbie Academy and was a bit of a Goth – black clothes, big hair and purple and black make-up.
“In fifth year I remember being told to go and wash my face because I was wearing dark lipstick.
“I was 16, for goodness sake!
“So I went and sat in the girls’ cloakroom until assembly was finished and went to my next class.
“But the deputy head spotted me and started shouting at me because I had not washed my face and I told her to eff off.
“In his office the headmaster told me the only thing I would ever be good for was going to art school. In his head that was the worst thing you could do but I always loved doing art and by senior school I was pretty competent.
“Maybe what the headmaster said consolidated my thinking and I got my Highers, three ‘Bs’, which was enough to get me into art school.”
At Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen, Ailsa explains, her painting method did not fit the mould and she was compelled to change tack.
“First year was general then at the end you would choose your subject,” she recalls. “I chose painting but painting did not choose me.
“The art school style was very loose and they wanted people who were expressive and free flowing whereas my artwork was very tidy and precise, with no great sweeps of colour.
“So in second year I did graphic design and illustration because I figured I would still be able to do a bit of painting and drawing.
“For your brief you would design anything from a pack of playing cards to hair products and posters for events.
“I loved art school – I spent four years there and in those days you got a student grant and your rent paid.
“It was enough to get by on and have a beer now and then.
“I graduated in 1991 but they did not prepare you and give you any guidance on how to get a job or anything.”
Ailsa chuckles in the telling of her next move – an unscripted flit to the capital and a hunt for some kind of paid employment.
“I had a friend in Edinburgh and I thought I’d move there and get a job,” she smiles. “I walked up and down the Royal Mile going into every shop looking for work.
“Eventually I got a job in a camera shop demonstrating cameras.
“The guy was really grumpy and for some reason hated Australians.
“One day this Australian guy came in and wanted to buy this really expensive camera in the window.
“Bur the owner wouldn’t sell it to him – because he was Australian.
“‘But it’s got a price ticket on it!’ the customer said. And the owner just says ‘No – it’s not for sale!’.
“I was only there six months and then I got a job at the Royal Blind School in the city. It was a residential school and the kids were blind and had special needs as well.
“I would help them prepare meals and go out and about with them.
“After a year I got another job working with special needs kids with the West of Edinburgh Development Group where the kids were in the community rather than a school.
“You would go into their homes in some of the peripheral housing schemes and it was a real eye opener.
“Some were pretty bleak places with 15-storey blocks of flats and I cycled everywhere.
‘Sometimes the lift would be broken and I couldn’t leave my bike at the bottom because it would get nicked – so I would have to carry it all the way up the stairs.
“One young woman I worked with had learning difficulties and mental health problems.
“She got a grant from social work to buy all her furnishings and literally within 24 hours of moving in these two guys knocked her door.
“They said they had come to fix her TV and basically emptied her flat – they took everything from her.
“She was suicidal and up on the 15th floor of this tower block.
“One day she was on the balcony and shouting she was going to throw herself off and the police had been called.
“A little crowd had gathered underneath and there were some people that were clapping.
“She should never have been in there.”
Ailsa tells me she joined mental health charity Penumbra and worked part-time with the National Schizophrenia Fellowship, where she spent one afternoon a week at their drop-in centre in the city centre, where she led the art group.
“It was a lovely job but very badly paid,” she recalls.
“Apart from art activities I would do music sessions as well with my guitar.
“They had a scheme where they got free tickets for the tattoo and I would go with the folk five or six times – and get so bored!
“At that time they were moving people out of institutions where some folk had been their entire lives.
“It was a massive jolt for them and some would replicate the structure of the institutions by doing things in a certain order at set times.
“Sometimes things could get violent and one lady would panic if there was a locked door because she had been locked in her room and had a fear of being confined.”
On a personal level, Ailsa met partner Alan Cairns in Edinburgh in 2000, when she was 30 and Alan 50.
“We moved to Galloway a year later and have been together ever since,” she smiles.
“Alan was doing photography then.
“He’s always been able to look at one of my pictures and say what it needs to make it that bit better – a bit more green, or a bit more blue. It always drives me mad because he’s always right.”
Once at Carsethorn, Ailsa recounts, she got a job with Alzheimer’s Scotland in Dumfries, first as assistant manager then service manager, before realising that if she didn’t put her artistic talent to good use, she never would.
“I was there for 10 years and did an MA in Health and Social Studies at the Crichton,” she says.
“We provided a lot of services including day care centre run in village halls so families could get a break from caring duties.
“We also had local minibuses and picked people up to take them out for the day once or twice a week.
“There were also care support groups, a memory clinic and link workers who would help people once they were given a dementia diagnosis, which could be devastating both for them and their families.
“Then in 2009 I hit 40 and I knew I needed to start doing my art again.
“I started painting and got sponsored through the council’s arts scheme to go to my first trade show at Harrogate and took down cards and prints of Belties, cats, dogs and other assorted animals.
“Then I started selling to shops and within a few years I had about 50 outlets selling my prints and cards.
“I was still working and it became quite cumbersome so I entered an art licensing competition in London run by Brand Licensing Europe.
“I presented my work and although I didn’t win I was shortlisted, which got me an agent.
“Now I have licensed work for lots of different companies and agencies including the RNLI, Oxfam and the RSPB.
“You create the artwork then they turn it into merchandise for sale such as diaries, calendars, brochures, mugs and jigsaws.
“So I get a commission for every item they sell.
“During lockdown everybody was into jigsaws and one of mine was listed in the Independent as one of their top 10 jigsaws for adults.”
Among many achievements in recent years, Ailsa has been listed as one of 25 top UK influential art brands to watch by a panel of over 200 retailers and business people by Licensing Biz and has exhibited at the Royal Glasgow Institute and Paisley Art Institute as well as in galleries across the UK.
While accolades are great, sometimes for Ailsa it’s the little things which give her deepest satisfaction.
“One time I just got a card in the post from this total stranger,” she says.
“They didn’t say who it was from but the person said: ‘I just wanted to let you know how much I love your artwork and how happy it makes me.
“Painting can be quite solitary when you are working away – and it’s so lovely to get that kind of feedback.”
