Around the galleries: Susannah Woolmer previews highlights of Edinburgh in festival time and recommends realism in London

Apollo, August, 2005 by Susannah Woolmer

To coincide with this year's Edinburgh Festival, The Scottish Gallery (16 Dundas Street, Edinburgh, 44 (0)131 558 1200) is exhibiting the new work of three Scottish artists working across a diverse range of media, between 5 August and 7 September.

Ann Little takes her inspiration from the Scottish countryside, producing chunky, tactile jewellery in a markedly post-modern idiom. Her sculptural designs incorporate softly rounded shapes and matt enamels with gentle tonal variations that possess a subtle simplicity.

The lush, verdant landscapes of Angus and Assynt provide the inspiration for a selection of paintings by James Morrison that embody the temperamental weather systems and untameable natural beauty of the east coast and far north-west coast of Scotland. Painted mainly en plein air, Morrison's landscapes are firmly rooted in the realist tradition whilst being exuberantly painterly.

The ceramics of Frances Priest possess a simple, sophisticated presence. At the age of twenty six she has already established an enviable international reputation and is exhibiting at the gallery for the second time. Fascinated by the relationship between two-and three-dimensional space, she emphasises surface pattern in her works to explore the notion of shape as a vehicle for her ideas. The influence of Japanese woven textiles is discernible in the textured surfaces of the clay.

Leon Morrocco is a Scot with Italian blood flowing in his veins. Dividing his time between Britain and Italy, the architecture of Rome and the Mediterranean coastline hold a special fascination for him. The Open Eye Gallery (34 Abercrombie Place, Edinburgh, 44 [0]131 557 1020) is staging an exhibition examining Morrocco's inspirations and working methods, following the creative journey from his Italian sketchbooks through to his completed paintings. Also on display will be a selection of works by some of Scotland's most well-loved homegrown contemporary talents, including John Bellany, Alan Davie, Ann Ross and Matthew Draper. Sculptural, elegant silverware--both jewellery and hollow-ware--by Pamela Rawnsley and ceramics by Christy Keely will be on view as well (13 August-7 September).

If you haven't yet had the chance to visit and you find yourself in the area, do treat yourself to the 2005 summer exhibition at Austin/ Desmond Fine Art (68-69 Great Russell Street, 44 [0]20 7242 4443), and enjoy a fine selection of iconic paintings, graphics and prints from the cream of twentieth-century British painters. Highlights include the lovely Spring Pool (1946) by Ivon Hitchens and Two Figures (1950) by Robert Adams. Hurry though; the exhibition closes on 5 August.

What is realism? This is the question being posed by the Albemarle Gallery (49 Albemarle Street, London, 44 [0] 20 7499 1616) in its major summer exhibition of that title. Fifty artists are taking part from Europe, the USA, South America, Russia, Australia, Jamaica and China, and there is a truly international feel to this show, with a wide variety of subject matter on display all questioning 'the real.'

'Realist art is not a thing in itself, but a vehicle for ideas about the nature of the world', says curator Edward Lucie-Smith in the preface to the catalogue. And so each painting can be read as an exploration of the way reality is perceived by the artist, rather than a definitive statement about the nature of realism. There are some exceptional examples of consummate skill on display here: Roberto Bernardi demonstrates his profound technical abilities in an intensely photo-realist still life; Maxwell Doig explores the spatial relationship between the human figure and its surroundings through unconventional viewpoints and an analysis of light and shade; the absolute precision with which Charles Jarboe contructs his streetscape lends it a crispness and a tangible early-morning stillness.

Some works offer more wry meditations on the subject, the most interesting being a collaboration between Kate Tedman and Eric Siemens. The elongated, sinewy figure of Meadow Maker III embodies the legacies of Egon Schiele, Gustav Klimt and Arthur Rackham whilst the colourful, decorative quality of the composition suggests a certain playfulness. The exhibition runs until 3 September.

Salander O'Reilly Galleries are staging an exhibition of the paintings of Paul Weingarten at 20 East 79 Street, New York ( 1 212 879-6606) until 26 August. In works by Weingarten the paint fairly erupts on to the canvas. Uncompromisingly painterly--he applies oil in thick impasto in a manner reminiscent of Emile Nolde--there is a frankness to his compositions and an unadulterated passion for the physical nature of the colour. A selection of new paintings will be on display here, including a number of portraits as well as various urban landscapes in his unmistakable, explosive style.

Salander O'Reilly will also be opening new galleries at 22 East 71 Street on Manhattan's Upper East Side next month. The expansion will allow the gallery to extend its exhibition programme to encompass its stock of renaissance sculpture and Old Master paintings. It will retain its present location, its home for more than eighteen years, where it will continue to exhibit nineteenth-and twentieth-century American painting and sculpture. The new galleries' inaugural exhibition will be previewed here next month.