Acrylic, gold mica flakes, paper, on canvas, 2022, 61 x 61 cm.
From walking at Edenmouth, on Kinshaldy beach, in and out the shallows at low tide.
My eyes rusted and lost/containing seawater/and my hair full of saltmarsh. /I ask for its touch, brimming/its voices and reasons
Acrylic, paper, charcoal, gouache, oil pastel, water soluble crayon, on canvas, 60 x 76 cm. 2022.
the tidal river mouth of the Eden, its sandbanks, its divided streams, sea eagles, seals, old fishing posts – all that and the cathedral sky in St Andrews Bay.
Acrylic, charcoal, water soluble crayon, linen on canvas, 2022, 61 x 61 cm
part of a series about Kinshaldy beach and the Eden estuary.
I had planned to paint over all of the first layer with its strong lines and paint runs. but stopped as I became aware that the charcoal lines done from my sketchbook notes were actually doing really interesting things with the under layers. As always, the fact that this has a piece of raw linen wrapped edge to edge across it, makes something special happen.
Acrylic, paper, linen, oil pastel, charcoal, soluble graphite on two canvases, diptych. 2022. 80 x 120 cm.
“I’ve torn my scarf into shreds; I’m all wrapped up in a blanket.
I took off my finery of pearls and coral, and strung a garland of wildwood flowers.
With my tears, I watered the creeper of love that I planted;
Now the creeper has grown spread all over, and borne the fruit of bliss.” (Meera Bai)
This is a painting that was a puzzle for months, until I stuck the large pieces of linen onto it, which freed me up to fit it into this series, give it a subject and a reason to be finished.
Acrylic, paper, charcoal on linen, 2022, 61 x 61 cm.
This painting came after a birthday walk in the Trossachs, amongst birch woods and hilly sitka plantations, above the river Garbh Uisge, meaning Rough Water. Walking through the birches I got my pocket sketch book out and drew madly which made me feel a bit dizzy. Here there is a feeling of looming hills and promontories, and birch trunks and the river full of rocks.
In the Hills refers to the wish of the painter to be up in the wild places, in the heather and the trees, walking and finding themselves.
Acrylic, pastel and linen on a box canvas, 80 x 70 x 4 cm. 2022.
Not so many layers on this one, as the raw linen does such wonderful things. I left quite a bit of it showing. A light touch compared to so many of my paintings which are deeply layered.
Acrylic, charcoal, cold wax, marble dust, mica flakes, oil and oil stick on canvas, 80 x 70 x 4 cm
the title is from the OS map, the pass between the peaks of Quinag. Bealach means pass, Chornaidh stony.
trying to keep the feeling of the preliminary work on paper, but remembering all that Lewisian Gneiss, the gritty twisted rock with its nooks and crannies, the tiny special flowers, mosses and ferns we found.
Acrylic, water soluble graphite and charcoal on panel, diptych, 2022, 76 x 152 cm.
My title is from a piece of landscape in Assynt, below the big corrie in the main wall of the hill called Quinag, or in Gaelic, Cuineag, meaning the milking pail. BÀTHAICH is a byre, and this piece of land was a shieling, or a summer pasture, from the days when the people of Assynt would take their cattle up to clean fresh pasture high up for the summer, and there they would make or repair bothies to sleep in, and live quite a different, free and light-hearted kind of life, making butter and cheese from the milk. This is before the Highland clearances of course.
acrylic, charcoal and paper on cradled panel, 2022, 76 x 76 cm.
Another square panel with a poem inside it
– small voices buried –
I am fierce frosted breast cut
and lungs trying in the heather
[Spring and visionary]
today
swinging in the windy dark/thrush flourishes his trumpet/picks and picaloes and changes tune