Meet the artist behind the Scot­tish Curl­ing Championship’s stun­ning ice art

If you hap­pened to tune in to this year’s Scot­tish Curl­ing Cham­pi­onship between 4 – 10 Feb­ru­ary, you’ll have been greet­ed with a rather won­drous sight. To pro­mote its spon­sor­ship of Scot­tish Curling’s show­piece event, Hendrick’s Gin com­mis­sioned a local artist to bring the usu­al­ly unadorned play­ing sur­face to life with a burst of colour and flavour.

Inspired by the rich plant life found in the green­hous­es at the Hendrick’s Gin Palace, the atmos­pher­ic coastal land­scape that sur­rounds it, and the rich her­itage of the sport of curl­ing itself, Glas­gow-based artist and illus­tra­tor Orla Stevens cre­at­ed a series of spec­tac­u­lar abstract designs in her home stu­dio, which were frozen under the ice for the dura­tion of the championships.

Curl­ing stones are tra­di­tion­al­ly made of gran­ite har­vest­ed from Ail­sa Craig, a leg­endary vol­canic out­crop that sits just off the main­land – a stone’s throw away from the Hendrick’s Gin Palace. This local con­nec­tion formed a key part of the nar­ra­tive that Orla weaved into her art­work, togeth­er with her own pas­sion for nature and the outdoors.

She explains: ​“Nature and the out­doors are a big part of my life; they go hand in hand with my cre­ative process. For this project, I was able to ref­er­ence a lot of nature imagery from the research trip that we had, draw­ing from the land­scape, and then also draw­ing from the plant life in the Hendrick’s greenhouses.”

Watch the short film below to learn more about Orla’s cre­ative process, which is as refresh­ing­ly curi­ous as a Hendrick’s Gin & Ton­ic served with a slice of cucum­ber. You’ll also dis­cov­er how she took inspi­ra­tion from meet­ing both Les­ley Gra­cie, the Mas­ter Dis­tiller at Hendrick’s, and Scot­tish Olympic Curler Scott Andrews.

Try a refresh­ing Hendrick’s & Ton­ic gar­nished with a slice of cucum­ber. To find out more vis­it hen​dricks​gin​.com