SOLD. Acrylic on canvas covered board, 2023, 20.3 x 20.3 cm
I painted this on a board that’s already got layers of previous abstract painting on it and this shows through from scraping back. The medium used and the scraping changes the mood completely. From our summer walk at Balathie woods in Perthshire.
Acrylic on gesso panel, 2023, 25.4 x 20.32 x 19 cm SOLD
This one is from a walk we did in Balathie woods, August trees, the depth of greenness in oakwoods full of bracken. It’s a small green jewel and I painted the 19 cm edge with a bright blue to set it off.
Acrylic on board, 2023, 25 x 10 cm
At the moment I like to make at least two versions of a painting, starting with a watercolour. In this case there is a water colour (below in the sketchbook), this small one on board, a slightly bigger one on canvas, and the big one.
Acrylic on board, 20 x 15 cm, 2023
This is done on a small board and is a spin-off from all the figures I am painting on the bigger pictures, but I feel all these, including the watercolours in the sketchbooks, are works in their own right. This is every Scot(sman), trudging across the sad landscape of climate change, global inequality and all the other ills that mankind has visited on itself. Or he’s just a guy on a golden hillside of bracken in autumn.
My son-in-law and good friend, Scott Donaldson, is a great model, his clothes are always interesting and the current hairstyle is nice to paint!
Acrylic on canvas, 2022, 15 x 15 cm
this little painting consists of lemon yellow brush marks over scraped paint of various blues and whites, like asemic writing, as if the Firth had used its mark-making ability on sand and water to write the river a love letter.
Acrylic on canvas, 2022, 15 x 15 cm
This is one of the small and very small canvases I have in my studio which act as idea boards and the recipients of spare paint, until they suddenly become finished in their own right. Usually there are a lot of layers on them. The gold paint on this one reflects light, stands in for light in sky and on water, and sandbank shape. I love gold and other metallic paint for this reflective quality. There is also a quiet connection to religious icons.
Acrylic on canvas, 2022, 40 x 40 cm. SOLD
A small painting, working over old paint, from my recent beach drawings. Part of a new series about 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 and linen on canvas, 2022, 13.5 x 30 cm. I like these little box canvases, the painting goes around to each side, so there are five surfaces, and the A4 size is quite a different experience.
Let’s go to that land is incised into the wet paint with the point of my palette knife.
Acrylic on panel, 40.5 x 40.5 cm, 2022.
The paint-over painted over – all that gold gleaming. Many layers here. The field of the yellow-haired boy, Achtiltibuie, a place not in Assynt but in neighbouring Coigach, the name derived from Achd Ille Buidhe, or I have found Achadh a’ ghille bhuidhe.
