This year I delivered two larger paintings to the Pier Arts Centre annual Open Exhibition, and was very happy to see them both exhibited in a show crammed with Orkney made art and craft.

‘Green Isle of the Great Deep’ was a made a while ago but has stayed in the studio – it is one of those ‘sentinel’ pieces which I had a few things to learn from before I could let it go. It is more representational than many of my paintings but has a magical quality suggestive of the island in Neil Gunn’s book of the same name, or perhaps Hether Blether the mythical island west of Rousay.

‘Infinity Pool’ recalls swimming in tidal pools when the tide has fallen, leaving a still surface with the imminent return of waves over the brink of the reef. The water beneath is still and deep, and for a short while sheltered and enclosing.

A trip to Wester Ross to commune with the ancestors and be surrounded by the vivid colours of the trees is a welcome change in autumn.

In Orkney the transition from summer to winter is marked by decreasing day length, lowering of the light and increasing frequency of gales. Trees often don’t get the chance to turn before the leaves are dessicated by the wind.

By contrast, in the forest, the air can be completely still, the horizon hidden, the sky reduced to a negative shape between the branches above. The diversity of the plant forms and abundance and diversity of plant life is mesmerising. My autumn sketchbook is a place to explore intense colours and record my response to the rich atmosphere rather than analyse or develop ideas for finished work.