More Night Painting.

Having made a decision not to edit my palette monochromatically, I am selecting the materials by tone. The hue of the material is part of the decision, made differently.

I divide an assortment of oil pastels into three tins, Dark, Mid and Light tones, all marked on the lid for identification in the gloaming. The Hue will not be visible whilst I’m working so you may wonder what I’m doing? After a few experiments I have discovered that the sensory deprivation of not being able to use my eyes to gather the usual information about the subject, has unexpectly led me to a more spontaneous way of working. It is literally as if I have tricked myself into being less self conscious and more intuitive. A resetting of creativity embracing chance perhaps?

So far I have enjoyed the unexpected and am now playing to it when I make my selection and pack my bag. Red mountains or an orange sea carry a potent symbolism and lead me to the much loved painting of Emile Nolde, someone whose work I have admired for forty five years.

Night Painting 2.

Having begun this work with water based media on paper I decided to change materials for something more robust. I dug out some old oil pastels and A5 canvas panels and continued my nocturnal visits to the beach. The sense of place becomes increasingly familiar and as it is hard to see what I am doing, I focus on the view and ‘feel’ my way into the subject. The light levels are so low that it is beyond being able to read colour and the work is modulated in tone. As I select my materials in the studio and pack a minimal amount, you might think my selection would be monochromatic. Instead, I have selected a range of colours in three tonal ranges, dark, medium and light. I am enjoying the surprise of the results when I have earnestly drawn a cloud or seascape to discover later the unexpected hue of the work.

Night Painting.

Over the last few winters I have determined to find an activity to see myself through these long hours. Last winter I focused on cutting lino blocks based on the decorated old Chinese porcelain inherited from previous generations of Norries family which I found stuffed into a cupboard. I became fascinated by how they told a story of their history and that of their previous owners.

When the clocks went back and what were already shortening days became long and ever lengthening nights, I embarked on a new project – painting in the dark!

The work started by going out onto the beach either before dawn and working until the light levels rose to be able to see colour, or in reverse, at dusk and working until it is completely dark. Sitting in the same place every time and with no light, I connected with an instinctive part of myself and my response when denied familiar references. Often it is unclear what colour or tool I have picked up but I am developing a second sense to having a limited number of tools around me and placing them carefully so I pick them up without having to check. I carry a small torch incase I drop something and to find my way home if it is too dark!
I started with work on paper and water soluble materials, pen ink felt pen watercolour but as the weather is so changeable have moved over to oil based pastels.

All detail and colour is lost in the darkness and the hills appear like huge whales rising out of the sea. The sea and the sky meet as I look south towards the isle of Lismore and the Firth of Lorn and onwards to the isles of Mull and eventually Jura. I know this because of familiarity with the geography but of course these masses are not visible in the darkness; I simply feel their presence. The subject becomes an emotional response to somewhere I inhabit frequently during the daytime and in day light.

Ink and wax on Fabriano 5×7

Ink and wax on Fabriano 5×7

Ink wax & Tombow pen on Fabriano 5×7

Ink wax & Tombow pen on Fabriano 5×7

Keen to increase the scale, I moved up from postcard to A5. On days too wet to go out, I have been experimenting with mono print on sizes up to A4.

Ink on Khardi paper A4

Monoprint A5

Monoprint A5

Monoprint over drawing, A5

Monoprint A4

A Year of Covid (2020/2021)Part 1.

At the beginning of March 2020 I went to see the Paula Rego exhibition in Edinburgh and, on returning home, I realised that I had been drawn to the expressive way in which she depicts hands. Almost all the characters were posed with their hands visible and they were portrayed as a microcosm of the expressive mood of the whole – I was fascinated. This led me to refer to the drawing of the Old Masters, from Leonardo to Van Gogh, and I realised that the depiction of hands in the history of art tends to be hands in action, hands gesticulating.

Since the first lockdown in 2020 I have been lucky enough to have much more time in my studio. Our business ground to a halt and this proved an opportunity to engage more fully with my creative practice. Inspired by Paula Rego, someone whose drawing and powerful feminist vision I admire, I asked my husband to pose as my model and began a series of drawings of his hands. Hands, not in action, but in repose.

As the spring continued, I created a series of drawings of hands, from sketchbook to large imperial sized drawings, some created by tying chalk to a cane. It became clear that hands had become a powerful icon for the sensory communication we all need and that haptic communication is a crucial part of our human experience. We were prevented from touching our loved ones and had to wash our hands continuously. For me, hands had became a symbol for our experience of Covid and of lockdown.

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During the summer of 2020 I was invited to take part in a local, funded project based on the concept of ‘Consequences’ named ‘Highland Whispers’. It was commissioned as part of the Royal National Mòd and I was one of five creatives from different disciplines asked to respond to the five senses whilst in isolation. In turn I received work from the others. I chose the concertina format, partly because it was easy to post, but also because it is a favourite form which enables me to work en plain air with a compact kit of materials. By the end of the project I had made five concertinas of the same size but of very different subjects and mood.

They now appear on a website being launched on April 26th to coincide with an exhibition in Ullapool at

https://www.antallasolais.org/ 26.4-20.5.2021 or online www.highlandwhispers.co.uk.

Here are three of the concertina books I made.

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The Flight of a Raven: My Brother | In memory of Andrew Raven who died in 2005.

“My father died forty years ago. We have a pair of ravens nesting near our house and every time one of the pair sits in a tree, calling, I like to imagine it is my father keeping a protective eye over us. We frequently see them, either together or as singletons, flying over the garden. You can hear the rustle of their feathers as they pass. It always surprises me how close they sound, especially when you see how high they fly.”

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The Call of the Curlew
((Concertina-fold artist book – graphite, white emulsion and a Woody)

“I worked on top of a set of old drawings that I had torn into the correct size to give a sense of the past and layers of experience.“

“We live next to a glen that is said to have been the home of more than three hundred souls but which now has no evidence of habitation except for one ruin. I started my work by visiting the ruin. Local mythology tells of a murder committed there. By spending the day, walking and then drawing, I opened myself, with the help of meditation, to the atmosphere. I sensed a feeling of dis-ease but who knows what I already carried with me in terms of expectation and projection.“

People often visit the Highlands with the belief that we live in virgin landscape, wild country with no past  except for nature. How wrong they are. Our hills are filled with human history and they have probably not been as empty as they are now for millennia. Human intervention is in evidence everywhere and now often managed by people who don’t venture out and enact government policy with drones and a computer from a desk. New fencing marches across hills as grants are administered for landscape restoration with little knowledge of the specific place. Humans were replaced by sheep but the sheep have now left and are replaced with deer as a few privileged people galavant round the hills in the name of sport. The flora is impoverished, the fauna dwindles and the Highlands fulfils the saying of Frank Fraser Darling when he described it as a “wet desert.” 

I have chosen to accompany my piece with a recording of the call of the curlew, a bird now placed on the “red list” as a bird of conservation concern, category 4 (the worst).

“The most noticeable thing is that we’ve got a number of new upland species on the red list. So we have increased concern there, particularly for curlews as our UK population is internationally important. We have about a quarter of the world’s curlews breeding in the UK and we know that they are doing badly elsewhere as well. So there is real international concern for curlew.” (www.rspb.org)

So this piece is dedicated to the people and the birds who once lived in the Highland glens and in particular Glen Gour in the parish of Ardgour, Lochaber.

‘In Love With Moss’ in response to the sense of smell.

I have chosen to make my piece about moss and its evocative smell.

The concertina book is laminated with the pages of the International Oak Society, Membership Directory 2003-2004. I chose to use these old pages as a reference to the concept of the past and of memory.

The subject is the Oak Woodland that we have here and the piece was made from drawings done in the Ariundle Nature Reserve, part of the Sunart Oakwoods Initiative, Ardnamurchan and Morvern.

An unplanned interval

We have all been overtaken by events and overwhelmed by the unexpected. For some it has had tragic consequences; for others is has caused untold anxiety and stress. There is no one who is not affected. This has never happened in my lifetime and I am sixty four. Like war but not a war, it all began with a sense of unreality. I have read about the phoney war of September of 1939. Glorious weather and everyone waiting. This is how the beginning of the pandemic felt here on the west coast of Scotland during the month of March.

Lock Down has had a profound effect on me and as most European countries now emerge, I have begun to reflect on what I have done and how I have used the time. Today I awoke feeling ungrounded, an unusual feeling when living here as there is always so much to do. It was useful because it made me reflect and write a list of what I have done to fill the last three months.

“bracken whacking gardening drawing reading weeding vegetable growing talking to my son chatting with my grandson on zoom sewing masks for family and friends cooking with foraged food walking on the beach with the dog sea swimming white wine zoom yoga three times a week collective household cleaning once a week speaking with friends to check they are safe and well listening to birdsong watching the fledglings on the bird table putting on weight”

It is amazing how long it all takes.

 

8.10.17

 

After a day of walking no further than the outside latrine (these days known as a composting loo) yesterday I decided to walk to the pier which has a cafe, shop and Wi-Fi hot spot. There was no point waiting for the weather to improve and so, although I didn’t put on my waterproof trousers, I carefully packed them, along with the Wi-Fi technology, into a small backpack. Usually it’s full of painting materials, with brushes tied to sticks emerging from the top, so on this occasion I felt rather different, like the well-equipped guests we host at home with all the latest textiles and boots made from modern materials which I presume derive from the petrochemical industries. No wool, little if any cotton, just varying degrees of breathable waterproof plastics.

I set off at a brisk pace, having gathered that it took an hour, but if I stuck my thumb out I might get a lift. I was lucky and did, just before the steep assent to get to the middle of the island. It’s funny how you can build things up and an hour each way had felt too much out of my day, despite the fact that actually I have nothing to do! It was also because when here in the past I had a sore hip which got worse as I walked. With two yoga classes a week it is much improved and not a reason to hold me back. When you drop the fear or resentment and accept a thing, it becomes easier to do. I know that but I don’t often remember! My mood lifted as I set off on a little island outing to be amongst people and contact the outside world.

My main encouragement was to try to speak to my son. As it was Saturday there was a chance of speaking to him without risk of him being at work, even if he hadn’t taken my advice and asked for compassionate leave. Although I was getting over the shock, I am still haunted by such an untimely death of one so young and I grieve for the loss for my son of his closest friend. My son knew the password to his friend’s phone and laptop and his parents said he knew more than anyone about their son’s life. The last call on his phone was to my son, they often shared a flat, went on holiday together, shared the same interests and spoke several times a day. ‘Brothers’ is how they described themselves. Every night I am troubled by the thoughts of loss and was relieved to discover the radio here has rechargeable batteries so I can follow the vagaries of the BBC broadcasting schedules although I am now catching up with their repeats. I am aware that it is distraction. The soothing sound of the voice of another, telling me a story.

As my time here moves into the second week, my thoughts are also preoccupied by other concerns. One aspect of working in tourism is that our lives are determined by seasonality. Coming here at the end of the season and after a big change in our lifestyle as we give up cooking breakfast and changing beds every day, I have been very surprised by how much work it still is to divide the house in half and have strangers just through a door. It surprises me that, having given up the daily personal involvement, it has still turned out to be intrusive. Unfortunately, with this new project, we have attracted a different sort of guest and a number have proved too demanding and critical. On two occasions I have been sent a twenty point list of criticisms and it makes one wonder why these people decide to travel? Over the whole season we have had masses of appreciation, so why do I find the few dissatisfied people so troubling?

By October, we are usually exhausted. In other years, we have closed and gone away together, leaving a house-sitter in charge. Because it is the first year of a new project, we were uncertain about its success so decided instead to have a less ambitious break in November. The reason for this long-winded preamble – too much information as Norrie says – is that the question I find myself troubled by, is where has my creativity gone? Empty, depleted, uninspired are all words that describe how I feel.

Living here in this perfect wooden hut feels like being cradled in a wooden womb. There is everything you need but no extras. Lucy has thought out every concern and still kept it simple and minimal. This is deliberate as she has discovered what gives her visitors the time and space to engage with their creativity and the Bothy Project works with her to provide subsidised residencies. I know all this and last time was on one of them, so why now am I empty of ideas?

Instead, I have decided to engage with the task of simple living; something I yearn for in my everyday. Reading Outrun has helped, as it is a gripping tale of just the same desire. There is an outdoor shower here which frightened me in the past, preferring instead to boil the kettle and strip off. This time I have used the shower and, with the careful management of the wood-burner and rationing of hot water, I have managed to have a great wash in what must be the most spectacular of locations, outside, looking up at the cliffs, with the caw of the ravens overhead, everything swathed in mist.

You bring your food with you when you come here and I have enjoyed the simple eating and having small meals when I choose. I am even keeping a food diary to try and lose eight pounds. I brought a bottle of white wine which remains unfinished outside, deciding instead that it doesn’t interest me. I have read a lot and listened to the radio, but there is something missing and it is my desire to make work. Perhaps that is why I am writing so much, it feels easier than drawing, I don’t know why.

On the way home from the pier yesterday, I met a man who told there was a whole whale skeleton on the north shore. I long to walk there to see it, but the weather is misty, I am unfit and don’t know the territory. I decide on a less ambitious plan and forgo my yearning to see a whale skeleton outside a museum. Instead I go to the Singing Sands, a famous beach that squeaks as you walk, but not today! Huge forests of kelp lie, ripped out at the roots, looking like extruded car parts or specialised components for a car wash. I pick one up and feel what looks like the root, ripped away from its anchor and am surprised to find how hard it is. I expected it to be soft like a sponge.

9.10.17

Something changed today apart from the weather and I found some enthusiasm to go out and draw. I remembered some work I did on Harris which I found when packing to come here and thought there might be a thread to pick up.

The geology is the thing that moves me most about being here on Eigg. There are basalt cliffs as on the Sound of Mull, but more dramatic with chimneys and gorges to create a fascinating cliff just above my bed. There is a window next to me and so I am able to lie here watching the cliffs with the moon coming up behind them. Or watch them move in and out of mist reminding me of Faroe.

The beach is made of basalt sand just like at Old Ardtornish, but here it has a white overlay, perhaps of shell. The two layers remain apart, perhaps their weight is different but the result is a surface of intricate patterns like marbled paper, especially where the final length of a burn crosses the sand. I find a discarded plastic bucket amongst the flotsam and jetsam and, knocking out its weight of sand, take it upturned and sit in the middle of the flow, drawing the patterns with pen and ink. It’s very soothing to sit in the middle of such splendour simply making marks as a response. No plans, no destiny just enjoying the engagement of joining the process of intricate pattern making.

 

6.10.17 | Thoughts from the Isle of Eigg.

I have now been here for six days and have moved from one hut to another, this time on the west side of the island where there is no internet or phone signal without a walk. Lucy, who owns Sweeney’s Bothy has been very kind, but is now away and her husband has allowed me to use their house connection to send a couple of messages. I, in return have taken their dog, Crinan’s half-brother, for two walks. 

 I have spent my time doing almost nothing. At first, I thought I would struggle with filling the hours. My creativity has deserted me and instead I have filled the time with looking out of the window as the weather shifts and turns, practicing my meditation, reading and, most of all, listening to the shifting sands of the programming of the BBC. 

 I am haunted with waves of emotion. Sometimes frustration that there is nothing I can do to help my son; when I have walked to find a signal, the phone either remains unanswered or goes to answer phone. The same when I ring home. I have sent messages but can’t remain within reception for long enough to receive a reply.

Sadness washes in and out about the loss of a young life and then the memory of other losses still held within. The death of my father thirty-seven years ago or my brother at exactly this time of year, in 2005.

A sense of guilt that having booked this space well over a year ago to make new work that now I have no inclination to start, despite all the boxes of materials I have brought and that are stacked up around my feet! Then I remember that it is just as noble to remain here, observing these tides of feeling, washing in and out and not only to withstand them but to use them to grow. The world from which I come is focused on external achievements and worldly success. I have always swum in a different current but none the less those values have been absorbed and so part of the struggle is to remember my values and to stick by them. I often have a yearning to be less busy. To have time to focus on the here and now in order to watch the natural world that surrounds us here in the Highlands, but even that is tainted by no longer being an original idea.

 There are now so many books about nature writing and escaping what used to be termed the ‘rat race’. Norrie is absorbed in one at the moment that opens with a woman walking down Oxford Street and has an awakening to the idea that there is more to life than this and catches a train to Inverness. And so starts her life as a crofter. 

 Twice over the last few months, somebody I respect has recommended another book to me. I ordered it and it was added to the ever growing pile next to my bed, looking more like a rickety block of flats than well thumbed stories. But, when I packed to come here it was suggested I bring a huge suitcase with wheels and so in went a pile of my waiting reading and now they are coming into their own. 

 Last time I came here I discovered Jenny Diski. This time the recommended book was The Outrun by Amy Liptrot. It was recommended, not for the story of London living but for the descriptions of landscape in the Orkney Islands. I have read it with fascination and also connected with the London pages as I think of my sons steering their way through London life. In many ways I understand why they are two angry young men when I read about the difficulties of urban living, where there are so many people and you have to be tough just in order to survive. The contrast with the ever-caring and providing parents my generation became, often in reaction to our own parents post-war preoccupations, means the step into the world is much harder than it was for us. It is harder, much harder but the values have also changed and money seems to be a language that they value most. There is choice and the grasping urgency of city life is not the only way and I can’t really help them, being a committed country girl. 

 

These books are not really a discouragement. They demonstrate that there is a yearning to connect with our natural world and learning to drop self-importance and to tread lightly enough to really see and feel. This is central to the work I make and my task is to respond in an authentic way. The question I struggle with is, is it authentic to do nothing or am I being lazy?

 

It’s not easy bringing stuff to Eigg. You may remember that I had problems last time I came and Lucy came to my rescue. This time I had left a drawing board and twenty sheets of paper with Lucy who kindly kept them under her bed. She also dropped in to pick up a box of materials from the mainland. Lastly, I ordered a delivery to come here before me! Needless to say it didn’t work that smoothly. The box was an order of sketchbooks. Either I or the online company got the wrong address and it was delivered it to me at home. The simplest thing was to post it to myself. £16 later we despatched it through the post office via Track and Trace. Post from Ardnamurchan goes via Perth! I tracked it to there before my departure on 30th Sept. It could have been on the boat with me. Or on Monday or Tuesday. There is no boat on Wednesday so finally I got it yesterday. 

My project was to fill as many sketchbooks as I can with no pressure, doodling, playing, working at dropping my inhibitions. I want to move my work away from the representational into a less figurative response to the landscape. Surrounded locally by an artistic community committed to figurative painting or, in the wider artistic community of Scotland, a major preoccupation with conceptual work, as usual my work swims against the tide but I have spent years on following my heart and I am not sure it is wise to change now.

Poems by our friend Tom Clark found here in Sweeney’s Bothy. Very suitable reading.

This morning is a still day. After a night of bright moonlight silhouetting the cliffs above this hut, the air is still today and I can hear the ravens on the cliffs above and the surprisingly strong voice of wrens that live here amongst the stones and bracken. The bracken is like a jungle and must create a forest for one so small as a wren. 

The swell of the sea has calmed and the rain has stopped, so the roar of the waves on the shore, mixed with the rush of the waterfalls behind has faded away, at least when inside, and I hear the creak of metal as the wood-burning stove expands and the newly lit fire warms the room and dries my washing.

Lucy told me that on a clear day you can see the southern tip of Barra and it has appeared today – three humps on the horizon, like humps of an enormous whale floating above the bright line that marks the join between sea and air. When drawing that line it is hard to know where it is really located and it’s so easy to represent it with one line. In fact, as I look, the sea is darker at the edge and then above is a pale stripe. Is it air or mist or water-bound air, air so full of sea that it is nearly sea? 

A View from Eigg.

The view of the mainland fades in and out. The hills merge and emerge. Sadness washes in and out like the tide; like the waves as with the mist. Showers of fat rain soaking me to the skin in minutes as I struggle to find a signal to the outside world.

 As darkness falls, a waxing moon reflects on water, seawater, water between islands, lochs and closer to home, even puddles. Like burnished silver, a trail of light leads across the land and sea. With the rumble of the gathering wind, I am here two days early to escape the anticipated storm. As with every out-of-season visit, I remember that the ferry service is not a tourist attraction for which I spend the summer months assisting guests to navigate the pitfalls of the Calmac timetable, but its real purpose is as an essential service to serve the island populations who rely on boats to bring food, fuel and parcels.

There is another light pulsing in the dark. A stronger, man made light that marks a headland of the smaller island, off this island, that makes the harbour here on Eigg. After the shock of hearing of an untimely death yesterday, I have pulled my bed to the window and am looking out over the panoramic view, back towards the mainland and find the strength and reliable intervals as the light turns round, enormously reassuring. There is a gentle creak of the metal chimney of the Hobbit wood burner and the occasional flex of the French doors as the wind gusts. I am cosy and warm in bed looking out through a crack in the curtains that I have swathed around the head of the camp bed to create a vista and lie on my stomach watching the night.

Over the last few years, I have used these outings to learn about our Hebridean and northern islands and have experienced an uplifting intensity as if the scale of a small place concentrates their essence. Each island is very different and distilled into a strong sense of place, but islands also have a reputation as suitable for people who wish to own their own small kingdom. Connected to that reputation is the fact that they also change hands frequently. The Isle of Eigg is no exception and in fact leads the way in this debate. As those of you who read The Guardian will know, there was an interesting article about Eigg last week. Amongst all the islands, Eigg is famous for its community land buyout. (In contrast, the iconic St Kilda is largely known for the evacuation in 1930). Eigg has a growing population which now stands at 105.

There is another aspect to being on an island. It can make you feel trapped. On my first morning here I received some devastating news about the untimely death of someone extremely close to my eldest son, his best friend and, in his words, more of a brother than a friend. I have spent the few days since then, preoccupied with an inner struggle, part of me longing to rush to my sons side and support the small child I gave birth to, who is now thirty-two. In fact, his mother is likely to be last person he would turn to or indeed, want, as he moves further and further into adult life and his parents become an irrelevance if not an embarrassment. That brings up more feelings of the emptiness a mother feels after the endless years of offering protection and support as one’s child learns to navigate the world and to accept that the world they choose is not the one you know or live in.

 It is now a challenge to be remote, cut off by a slice of sea, high winds and the constraints of the ferry timetable with no phone or email, intensifying the sense that there is nothing I can do which can easily flip into frustration and the sadness into depression. It is good for me to work through these internal conflicts. I haven’t gone so far as to decide to leave early but instead to observe the emotions as they pour through me. 

 

Bothy envy

Some of you will know that I have a passion for sheds and this leads me to suffer from shed envy of anyone who is lucky enough to have one! I have spent years wandering round the garden at Ard Daraich dreaming of building a shed! I want to sleep in it on light summer nights, watch the dusk at eleven pm and the dawn at two. I want to be away from phone or internet and just be in the present, uninterrupted, to think and work.

Henry has restored a derelict stone shed, Littlure Bothy, a fisherman’s bothy, overlooking the most beautiful inlet, a Geo as they are called in Shetland. Having found me painting on the hill, he offered to lend it to me as a studio for the rest of my visit. I was thrilled as I had heard about it when here in April and had spotted it in the far distance when on another walk. I knew, therefore, that it was not a very long walk but it was not next door. I was assured that it took twenty minutes and on the first day I was taken by surprise as, striding across the prostrate heather, I was interrupted by a phone call (mostly there is no signal) I sat in a dip, a rabbit warren, out of the wind and talked to a friend a world away and so when I resumed my walk and reached the hut it had taken me forty minutes. I guess I stop a lot and look at things, views and details. The most memorable pause was finding an inlet, protected from a boiling sea by a row of ferocious teeth or rocks, protecting a calm circular cove. As I appeared, a row of heads appeared as well. I don’t know the collective noun for seals but I now term them “a parliament of seals”. They were so friendly, so curious and seemed blissfully at home in their natural element with surf crashing round them but basking in the still water and sunshine. Seals appear to sunbathe, lying on their back, star gazing and apparently just enjoying the elements, the sun, water and movement. A mammal clearly enjoying itself. I am told there is a more scientific reason, the sun helps manage the parasites they host on their skin.

Each time I walk to the Bothy I notice something different. It’s as if the walk here has become part of the daily practice and is like a meditation before beginning to work. Working from home as I do, I haven’t experienced the separation from work and life since I left day-school at the age of sixteen so unlike the majority, this is a new opportunity for me. I am quite sure a commute on the tube would not feel the same but it is a time to gather your thoughts and leave the concerns of domesticity behind and empty yourself for the new things ahead. I remember someone telling me they saw a man remove his wedding ring on his way to work in London. All sorts of new opportunities lie ahead, obviously!
The wind has dropped and whilst yesterday was swathed in fog, today is bright, calm and soft. A glorious day. I decided to alter my route this morning and walk on the other side of the inland loch. Two days ago when passing this place, I was fascinated by a group of large birds having a bath. They were a small group of large brown birds on the shore preening themselves in the sun with one afloat on the water, involved in a lot of dunking and diving. On being disturbed they inevitably changed their behaviour and a pair took off wheeling round in an elaborate dance. The silhouette was reminiscent of a bird of prey, dark chocolate brown with a white tip to each wing, not a seabird I thought but maybe some sort of goose? Later it was suggested they were Bonxie or Great Skua, an aggressive sea bird that I hadn’t come across until on Fair isle for my birthday.
Today had a different surprise, three large white swans, Whooper Swans, again on the shore preening until disturbed when they took to the water. A sign of the beginning of the winter migration? We get lots of these swans on a freshwater loch in Ardgour but usually as a mark to the end of winter. These are marking the other end of the breeding season and the summer.
Continuing to skirt the edge where beautifully constructed dry stone dykes disappear under the water, I was delighted to see another three swans appear and quickly come into land on the water too. Two groups of three, sizing each other up just like young men out for an evening or Italian families strutting their stuff after work. They swam towards each other and like men preparing to joist, rose up, almost vertical as if the water was solid and could take their weight, flapping their wings at one another. It made a great noise; slapping feathers on water. Posturing. Was it the behaviour of the males? Some swans didn’t react, leaving their friend to defend them. Were they the females? Having grouped together, too friendly, too soon, they burst apart like billiard balls, scattered across the surface.

I left the loch and continued down to the shore and the fishermans bothy. There was a seal outside in the bay sunbathing as usual with his nose in the air looking like a stout Italian wine bottle, afloat.

Someone found a message in a bottle. It had been put into a bottle somewhere north of here by a boy on holiday. I hope he was excited to get a message back with a map showing where his bottle was found. Maybe he had hoped for the Caribbean or Canada but in a week it had traveled the length of Shetland.
A  pair of Otters
Boat arrived
Silence
All wildlife went to ground
Resented sharing bay with others then realised they were fishermen having their breakfast, hooted and waved on departure. Felt selfish that I had distrusted them.
If writing a wildlife blog I would be scoring high with my sightings so far.
Divers appeared.
My living bottle resurfaced, sunbathing! Amazing how long he just lies there floating. I can hear his snuffles when he drops to0 low and water goes up his nose!
Hovering, like a semi-detached sibling, on the horizon, is the island of Foula. From the bothy it comes in and out of view depending on the weather. When first here I didn’t see her at all but then one day I arrived and there she was, sitting on her line between the sea and the sky often with a cloud on her head by way of hair.
Interesting how, when the weather is calm and the sea swills about following its own internal force pulled by the moon but no longer whipped by the wind, the connection that I come to rely on in order to work is weakened and requires much more teasing to find a thread. At the moment my work feels best when responding to the forces of nature in their extremes. No doubt a psychoanalyst would say that was because the external forces more closely mirror my internal ones. That may be true and it shows my passionate nature, something British society doesn’t know how to respond to, especially in women. But it explains why I am so excited by the forces of nature, my subject. There is a challenge in how to respond in quieter times. More careful observation is an opportunity but I am then drawn back into the same debate about the reason to make work and for me that is not about recording, it is about responding. A circle emerges in my internal debate and I have a bad habit of getting on the hamster wheel.
Of course another reason for responding to the drama of wild places in bad weather is that it mirrors the world I was brought up in. When raised in an atmosphere of continual conflict in which there is no hiding place, your emotional hard wiring become trained to expect drama and conflict as normality. As my life has moved into more tranquil times with the life I have constructed for myself as an adult, my dna still feels at home when the drama continues. Perhaps that is why so many people who move to the highlands feel at home here. This is not my culture but it is my home. It is a pity, in these difficult political times, that I don’t feel more welcome.
Something to learn is how to observe the cycles of your own creativity. It too seems to mirror the weather in its cyclical nature. Flurries of ideas like a blizzard of snow engage you in the process of making. And afterwards the calm of a quieter day. And then there are the days when nothing goes right, when you cling to the life raft knowing this is part of the process, painful though it may be. My belief is that it is a connection with these emotions that allow one to be creative. As if your own internal rhythms are pulled to and fro like the sea by the moon. There are those who believe the moon acts on us too. How strange it is that humans spend so long disguising these forces with a man-made world, one disconnected from the nature of life. But now there are too many of us and so I should be satisfied that I have this cove to myself while so many are busy elsewhere.

Littlure Bothy, Near Walls, West Mainland, Shetland Islands.

All photos taken with my i phone.