Painting & Printmaking School of Fine Art
Caitlin Paterson
Caitlin Paterson is a Scottish artist currently completing her final year at the Glasgow School of Art. Deeply inspired by nature her work stems from a fascination with aquatic life, the complexity of natural systems, drawn towards the meditative qualities of water, and the way life adapts within confined spaces.
Her practice revolves around the creation of immersive environments that blend the physical and the virtual. Through a combination of painting, projection, sound and inclusion of an aquarium, she explores ideas of containment, observation and the creation of enclosed ecosystems. The installation is designed to cause a calming and almost therapeutic response from the audience, blurring the boundary between the viewer and the work, inviting them into fragile, constructed ecosystems.
By layering moving images, ambient soundscapes and painted surfaces, Caitlin invites the viewer to slow down and inhabit the space with a heightened sense of presence. Her work is as much about perception and environment as it is about the objects themselves, aiming to prompt questions about how we interact with and impose meaning on the natural world within curated spaces.
The Tank
This series of works titled ‘The Tank’ is based on an aquarium that I set up in January, the goal was to create a calming and immersive space for viewers to enjoy.
The tank contains a mixture of volcanic soil and active substrate to promote healthy plant growth, root tabs to provide extra nutrients, 2 pieces of drift wood balanced against each other in an arch formation, a variety of different vibrant plants, and a large population of small bladder snails and tiny microorganisms called Copepods which all help keep the tank clean and algae free.
The tank has been active since the 23rd of January 2025.
The Snails
Bladder snails found their way into the tank at some point in February with the addition of some new plants. Arriving on the plants as a clutch of eggs and only spotted when they were already reaching maturity. Bladder snails are a very common form of pest snails with a reputation of completely taking over freshwater tanks due to their fast reproduction rate, however proved themselves to be extremely useful cleaning the glass of algae and biofilm.
The population of these snails has been controlled up until now as there has not been any extra food sources added into the tank besides naturally occurring algae and plant waste. While the addition of snails was not something I had in mind when initially setting up this tank they have proved to be a great addition keeping the water and plants clean and enhancing the brightness of the tank. They are small enough that they will not be noticed unless someone is actively looking for them and don’t take attention away from the tank itself only maintaining the cleanliness and overall health of the plants.
