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.

 

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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.

Leaving Shetland

When I got home, I began to write about the last week of my residency at The Booth. Different, as I was no longer alone but immensely rewarding as we explored some of the more distant places; places I had saved to go to with a photographer friend who came to join me for the last week to work on images for an exhibition in September. Not only did we visit Yell, Unst and Eshaness but most exciting of all, Fair Isle, where I was taken as a birthday present; the best birthday present ever. A flight in a four seater plane the twelve miles south, to stay for the night at the Bird Observatory. It was completely fantastic!

Looking back at what I began, I have decided instead to leave the photographs to tell the story. I made scores of quick drawings to complete at home, but it is only now, three weeks later that I have found time and energy to begin. As when I returned from Eigg, I was immediately struck down by a fearsome cold and have not been well enough to continue my work. The enthralling light, space and clarity of Shetland faded in my memory as I lay in bed, ill, and so to write a diary of where we went and what we saw would seem rather tepid now. I will leave the images to speak for themselves.

Culswick

Annifirth

The Ferry to Yell

A Day on Unst

Stenness

Dore Holm, Esha Ness

Eshaness Lighthouse

 

April on Shetland

The Booth during Storm Imogen, 8th February 2016. 105 mph winds recorded on Shetland.

After my return from Iona, eighteen months ago, I made an application to come here, the blue building in the photograph above, to continue my island odyssey and develop new work. It’s a measure of how popular The Booth is that it is only now, April 2016, that I am here. I applied for January but having been here this month, I am relieved that it was not January they offered. It is not entirely convenient to be here now as April is the month of my birthday and this year it is a significant one. So after three weeks of being alone, working, Norrie is arriving this evening with a friend from Mull and Norrie and I are off for a weekend of exploring and then, when he goes home with my car on the ferry, C and I will continue investigating the further reaches of these islands and for a generous birthday present, I am being taken to Fair Ilse.

I have enjoyed the days lengthening which seems to be speeding up. It is still cold and quite often wet with squalls hitting the building about every twenty minutes. I was asleep on the one night of good Northern Lights and so, as usual, I missed them. The first ten days were unseasonably warm and sunny and made it possible to be outside most of the time. The work was slow and I was uncertain of a way forward. Shetland is new to me and I decided to find out more, not only about the geography and geology but also by just living here. I have been to the cinema three times, something I have never done alone before, met other artists and followed up introductions given to me before arrival. It has all helped me to bed in. I have really enjoyed my conversations, especially with E, a friend of a friend and G, a painter whose work I think is exquisite.

http://www.arushagallery.com/artists/gail-harvey

This evening, the weekend and next week will be different and so I have developed a work practice that is portable, small and which will enable me to continue next week, collect more information, begin new ideas, all in order that when I get home I will be able to carry on and finish the pieces I have begun here. The summer is a busy time at Ard Daraich, one of the reasons I use the winter to get away and focus, so it will be good to have some work under way which will enable me to smoothly transfer location without too much disruption. Time will tell if I succeed.

I have described how I have enjoyed the panoramic function on my phone. It has helped me capture something of the rolling horizontality of Shetland, something that is very different from the verticality of Lochaber. As a result I have made small pieces which when placed together, form a chain or narrative of the places I have been. They are not explicit but try to capture something of the elemental nature I have seen. As usual I have been using pure pigment but this time in combination with graphite which suggests something of a lava flow.

To add a last note, I have failed to upload all the photos I had collected to add here, both of my work and where I have been. The broadband is not quite as reliable on Shetland as I had come to believe. It reminds me of home where you can’t get online at all when the children get home from school. And now I have just received a phone call to say that Norrie’s plane has been grounded at Kirkwall due to a technical problem and they are having to fly another from Aberdeen. When he asked what problem they had, their answered that a wheel was about to fall off. I am grateful that they are safely on the ground and waiting.

We are besieged by technical hazards which reminds me of quite where I am, so far north.

 

 

 

 

Muckle Roe

Whist I have been on Shetland the weather has been good. I am told it is not always like this but nearly every day has had some sunshine and so it seems mistaken to spend all day inside, working. Working removed from my subject is something I am never comfortable with and so what better reason than dry weather, to be outside. There is something deep inside that relaxes, feels at home and instantly curious; in some sense it feels like going home when I go out. But I have come here to work and being in this creative space has given me a sense of guilt that I am not justifying my visit with important output! Going for walks, exploring the map and looking at digital images whilst planning where to go next is not the same as making work. However, Shetland is new to me and quite strangely different and I have decided to let it seep into my blood, sit with it and let it take me where it will while I search for the resonance required to make authentic work.

Yesterday I awoke with this dilemma sharply in focus and decided the best way to resolve the conflict was to trust my instinct and draw on the ways I know best and once again, go outside. During the previous day I had been to Lerwick and to their first-rate bookshop “The Shetland Times” to buy another map. In planning my time here I had bought some maps with me but it shows how large Shetland is, that it takes five maps to cover the whole archipelago. Scalloway is in the middle of Shetland Mainland and so I had only expected to explore South Mainland and West Mainland and thought the The North would be too far. But after recommendations, I decided to extend my range to North Mainland and later, next week, with friend C, to go to the North islands of Yell and Unst.

So equipped with picnic, (which I didn’t eat) my new map which is so modern it has an app you can download onto your phone and enough diesel, I went out yet again, this time following the signs to North Islands, heading for Muckle Roe, an island just off the west coast and attached by a short causeway.

As with almost everywhere I have been, to see the best of the landscape involves being prepared for a walk. Little I have seen is easily accessible without being prepared to leave the car which of course, just like on the isle of Eigg, restricts the size of work as everything has to be carried and secured from the wind.

Part of the internal conflict has been about wanting to scale up my work and I have spent a lot of the time trying to devise a work practice that can capture the essence of place with enough information on site to continue when back in the warmth and dry of the studio. This has led me along a tunnel of uncertainty and has produced a pile of rejected work.

To reconnect with my instinct and knowledge of what works best for me (something it is all to easy to lose connection with when swept up in the ways of the world and convention) I had packed a number of small pieces of paper and a minimal set of drawing tools and went exploring. The map had a large blue footprint at the end of the road which had a polite sign saying this is the end of the public road and a rather ad hoc car park. I parked and started to walk and quickly found another sign with map telling me this was a Core Path and I had a choice of a two or four kilometer walk. The shorter route led to a lighthouse along the coast and the other along a track inland passing a series of freshwater lochs. As always, I chose the coastal route and within ten minutes was so struck by the view I was drawing already.

When working on the structure of a drawing, it is hard not to be seduced by the breadth of the landscape here. Except when looking at detail, there are few verticals. I have been surprised by how much I have enjoyed the panoramic app in my phone camera and have enjoyed the images it has taken. By the end of the walk I had decided to revert to the folded books I often make or perhaps work on a scroll format. I had come to the conclusion that internal conflict was a waste of energy and that if I enjoy working small and portable, I should stop minding, relax and enjoy the things I have seen. The coast here really is breathtaking and is my usual subject but here it is harsh and severe, unrelenting and ferocious. On just a short walk I had crept along the top of a cliff where even the pathbuilders had supplied a hand rail, struggled with my vertigo which was unpleasant and been grateful for my fantastic coat. With the hood up, I was able to turn my back on a severe hailstorm and stand it out, occasionally looking over my shoulder to see how close the blue sky had blown and by keeping my hood up was able to negotiate the more frightening places on my return where I just kept looking at my feet with the hood obscuring the view.

Before returning to the car I sat in the sun above a sandy bay watching the rabbits and noticing the bonsai heather they have created with the combination of grazing and burrowing. A lunar landscape.

 

A few of things I have seen

Having driven, walked and poured over maps for a week and a half, I have been to some amazing places and seen some extraordinary things. Understanding the landscape here in a painters way would take twenty years or more but I am beginning to appreciate the forces at work which make this place what it is. However, to translate that into a visual response is another matter.

The elements are stronger and more extreme than anywhere I have been before but the evidence of that is in what I can read from the landscape rather than in the experience. My visit has been blessed with exceptional weather and apart from a cold wind, colder than any I am used to, the sun has been bright and warm and the spring flowers are appearing. Verges are smothered with Celandine and the Coltsfoot is thrusting its leafless head through verge gravel in its strangely determined way.

Plants that flower with no leaves are an oddity, like Colchicum, or autumn flowering crocus, which produce huge leaves in the spring and then nothing else. When they have died down and you have noticed with mild disappointment, the non event, a delicate mauve glass-like vessel appears in September or October which is the flower, strangely naked without its supporting coat of leaves to surround it.

As you know, my painterly interest does not lead me to represent the view in the conventional sense. I am more interested in developing a language to suggest something of the forces at work behind what you see. The pounding sea, the gale force winds and the ripping currants have produced an extraordinary land with cliffs and stacks, drowned valleys and rolling brown hills covered in heather, grazed and blown into a tightly packed carpet. I can’t reproduce the wind funnel or storm force seas that pick up rocks the size of cars and hurl them yards inland but I can explore a vocabulary of dark black forms, silhouettes, deeply rooted against a swirling environment of air and water and follow where it takes me.

Another list, this time of sounds heard and creatures seen.

Air full of the song of skylark

Call of the lapwing

The coo of the eider duck

Strings of eider duck outside the window

Herring gull dissecting a star fish outside the window

Several otters, twice seen swimming past the window

White hares

Pairs of curlew

Shetland ponies

No potholes

Perfect tarmac

 

 

 

 

Words

Bridge of Walls
Muckle Ward
Mouldy Hill
Johnny Sinclairs Nose
Swabwall
Fitful Head
Blackholes
Cannygates
The Rump
Noup of Noss
Headless Banks
Cauldhame
Trouda
Burra
Whale Wick
Papil
Houss
Toogs
Papa
Hoggs of Hoy
Nesting

Just a few of the names seen on signposts or found on the map as I continue to explore.

I love this. A hollow dug out to shelter a boat from the howling winds.