Sarah Keer-Keer is both a scientist and an artist, living in Roslin. She attended Damian Callan’s classes and he became her mentor when she became a professional artist. Most recently she has become a studio potter and now runs Roslin Pottery: www.roslinpottery.scot

As well as the diving series, we are showing examples of her landscapes, paintings of fishermen, plus a couple of delightful portraits of pigs!

Sarah Keer-Keer was privileged to learn alongside and to paint members of the Edinburgh Diving Club when the club trained at Newbattle during the refurbishment of the Commonwealth Pool. 

Some of the young people depicted in her paintings are now distinguished divers, including James Heatly who represented Scotland at the 2014, 2018, and 2022 Commonwealth Games medalling in 2018 and 2022. Many of the divers have gone on to dive coaching.

“I’ve had a fascination with the beauty of board diving for some time. The shapes the divers hit at the apex of their dive are a delight to behold, though they last just a fraction of a second.

I hope I have captured in the paintings what it is like to focus and train for a great sport. All the concentration, precision and devotion that is necessary to create an ephemeral moment of perfection.”

Sarah Keer-Keer is both a scientist and an artist, living in Roslin. She attended Damian Callan’s classes and he became her mentor when she became a professional artist. Most recently she has become a studio potter and now runs Roslin Pottery: www.roslinpottery.scot

As well as the diving series, we are showing examples of her landscapes, paintings of fishermen, plus a couple of delightful portraits of pigs!

Sarah describes the evolution of the diving paintings:

LEARNING TO FLY

I am a scientist and also an artist. In 2002 I began attending life classes with Damian Callan, at his studios in Edinburgh, which he refers to as ‘The University of Dalry’. I concentrated at first on the figure drawn from life. The human figure, in particular the moving figure, is Damian’s area of excellence and he was an inspiring teacher.

I had a toddler and baby back then, and I could spend my days watching their chubby limbs, animated expressions and acres of perfect skin. The depth of concentration I achieved in Damian’s classes, was in stark contrast to the chaos of being a hands-on mum to two little ones. I loved it.

Later, after attending courses on landscape and cityscapes in 2006, I concentrated on those areas and left figurative art behind for three years. I started to work as a professional artist and Damian became my mentor. In 2009, I came back to working with the human figure, but I found I wanted the complexity of the figure in motion and with the environment. I started painting fishermen at Port Seton, then ice-skaters at Murrayfield ice-rink, and finally board divers.

I’ve had a fascination with the beauty of board diving for some time. The shapes the divers hit at the apex of their dive are a delight to behold. They last just a fraction of a second, but they feel, like art itself, an ephemeral moment of perfection.

Edinburgh Diving Club is a top diving club with young athletes competing at international level. Whilst the Edinburgh Commonwealth Pool was being refurbished, they trained in a small pool close to where I live. I went to watch them one day in 2010 and found myself signing up my kids (then aged 11 and 8) and myself, for classes. We dived with the club for a year.

The old pool in Newbattle had very limited diving facilities: only two boards for the whole club and a dark-stained, low ceiling. Sometimes the best young divers bounced so high before a dive, that they could touch the ceiling. The divers never complained about the limited facilities. They just got on with it. They were a great bunch of athletes, always kind and encouraging with our fledgling efforts.

The main club trainers Vicki Tomlinson and Mary Sless, ran a tight ship. They watched every dive performed in training, giving individual feedback on each dive. They didn’t allow misbehaviour poolside, but stayed tolerant of the good-natured playing that takes place: the youngest boys sometimes played in and out of the water with the ease of seals by the shore.

I watched my children as they overcame various hurdles under Mary’s guidance: prior to diving lessons, my 8-year-old could not swim confidently, add to that her fear of heights, and you will appreciate that when she finally executed a lovely dive from the 1 meter board, I felt like I was watching a miracle.

Divers were encouraged regardless of their age, level or potential. Some dived for the joy of it, or for the friendships they had made: one pair of girls met up every Friday night to dive together, and then putting on their pyjamas in the changing room, would head off for a sleep over.

All the divers encouraged each other, falling silent in sympathetic concentration when someone was about to try something new and difficult. Blasting out wolf-whistles when they managed it.

Some of the divers at this Scottish club were heading towards big things: Grace Reid (who was the youngest Scottish competitor at the 2010 Commonwealth games), James Heatly and Amber Foster, to name but three. Amber is a High Dive coach for Edinburgh Leisure, while James and Grace represented Scotland at the 2022 Commonwealth Games where they won a gold medal in the Mixed synchronised 3 metre springboard event.

The club, it seemed, could teach anyone to dive. Even myself at 39, older adults too, with no previous experience. If you have never dived as a child, you will never make a perfect fluid dive, but still we all tried. Everyone was accepted and inspired to push themselves. Surely this is the essence of what makes sport great?

I was fascinated by how one minute the divers would be laughing and playing with each other in the queue, and the next minute they would be poised at the end of the board, in the rapt concentration that is required just before a dive. I watched enthralled as my own children developed the discipline of intense concentration just prior to a dive.

The moment just before a dive became a real focus for me. When I stood on the end of the board, I thought only of the dive: everything else fell away. I would imagine all the movements and positions of the dive. If I concentrated perfectly, I could do as a good dive as I

had imagined. If I let my concentration slip, even slightly, I would fall apart mid-air, the sore slap-sound I hit the water alerting the other divers to my terrible dive. I felt that everything needed to create the perfect dive was contained in that moment before; it held a tension and a purity of concentration that I found exhilarating. I wanted to paint it.

The club embraced the idea of me painting the divers. They understood about how beautiful diving was and how it can’t always be captured by a photograph. The parents of young divers also liked the idea, giving myself and Damian permission to work with their children whilst they were in training. 

We set to work. My paintings were influenced by the local pool and its dark-stained wooden ceiling. The diver’s bright, golden flight, framed by this dark background, got me researching the paintings of Rembrandt and his use of transparent glazes.

Whilst completing preparatory sketches, the illustrator Dave McKean became a big influence: I wanted in my paintings to have some of the immediacy of the gothic, glowing illustrations he painted for Neil Gaiman’s book ‘The day I swopped my dad for two goldfish’.

I hope I have captured what it is like to focus and train for a great sport. All the concentration, precision and devotion that is necessary to create a single moment of perfection.