oil on panel, 25 x 20 cm.
oil on cradled panel, 20 x 25 cm
oil on panel, 30 x 30 cm
various treatments of this spruce plantation in front of a lochan with the day moon high in the sky. Findo Gask is a tiny spot in Perthshire where the Romans had signal stations and a camp, and in WWII there was an RAF airfield there.
acrylic and oils on collaged canvas, 150 x 100 cm
Continuing to paint my garden, on a bigger canvas, this is another corner, next to the studio door and the old shed. We have had glorious singing from the blackbird, he’s up on next door’s television aerial. And sometimes down in the flowerbeds and on the grass finding bugs. I am sorry to say there are not many worms in my garden.
IN THE BACK OF MY MIND (MAY GARDEN) One more in my garden series, oil over acrylic on linen, 2025, 122 x 91.4 cm.
This one is going to Graystone Gallery in Stockbridge, Edinburgh later this week for their Festival show, I am very happy to say.
acrylic and oil on canvas, 2025, 80 x 60 cm.
From my kitchen window, February, pre-dusk. The sky is often magical at this time of day looking north west ish or due north.
oil and acrylic on collaged cradled wood panel, 2025, 61 x 61 cm
and here we are in winter, early this year, on a fine blowy day, getting lots of dog blankets washed and dry, and the garden is very dormant.
oil on collaged wood panel, 61 x 61 cm, 2025
A painting of asters and of a cone flower in my prairie garden, the Glade Coneflower which is something of a rarity in its native Kentucky , and it’s quite difficult to grow from seed.
these paintings of my garden in deepest September bloom are all oil on gesso board with a 2 cm deep edge, 25 x 20 cm. They are in Graystones Gallery in Stockbridge, Edinburgh. link here
oil , sand and shell on a cradled gesso panel, 25 x 25 cm, 2024.
This small painting is from a group especially made for Tatha Gallery’s celebration of its tenth year.
They are part of a new body of work I am making about Tentsmuir and Kinshaldy beach where I walk my dog several times a month, based on a poem I wrote almost 2 years ago (published in Tears in the Fence Literary journal Spring 2023). From it I have taken the titles of these small paintings.
loose pigment, sand and shell in oil paint over acrylic layers on canvas collaged with paper and fine linen, 100 x 100 cm
part of a new body of work I am making about Tentsmuir and Kinshaldy beach where I walk my dog once or twice a week, based on a poem I wrote almost 2 years ago (published in Tears in the Fence Literary journal Spring 2023). The text on the painting comes from this poem, which starts like this –
here at tentsmuir
there is only the hackle of a hole where the wind blows never a gap in the horizontal
the sea-eagle passes
overhead exchanging beaches forging a faraway helicopter coming
and going
and your holy human heart in your breast widens the sky
holds it in your hand to touch the marrams
text around the edges too, hand written in pencil
painted along the top
I take a pocket-sized sketchbook with me on walks to make quick drawings in, and from these and from notes taken with my iphone camera, a new set of paintings both small and very large is coming into existence. I am experimenting with mixing sand and shell fragments from the beach into the paint, or sprinkling it over the wet paint, to bring the materiality of place into the paintings. I want to explore the idea of belonging and spiritual release through the experience of nature in that mix of paint and the material of the land in my work.