Continuing my VACMA funded project…

Learning how to process earth pigments and charcoal into paint and pastel crayons has been necessarily slow and meditative. It takes as long as it takes, from gathering suitable materials then drying, grinding, sifting, levigating, grinding, mullering and mixing.

Sometimes it has felt quite regressive, slipping back into childhood, being absorbed by playing with the textures of mud and clay. It appears to be intuitive but, there is a fair amount of technical knowledge that explains why each spoonful of gathered mud or rock responds differently to each part of the process. My results varied wildly with two lumps of clay found a metre apart.

The therapeutic qualities of colour and sensory feedback involved processing the materials develops my relationship with the landscape.

‘I see the processing of colour as performing nature into culture. In the studio or workshop we speed up time, we erode and breakdown material in an instant that would take rivers and seas hundreds of years to do. In the vacuum of the creative space, creative destructive forces enact natural environmental phenomena’ Lucy Mayes.

For quite a while I have incorporated botanicals, soils, charcoal, peat and sand, and grit in my paintings, usually using acrylic medium . But it has always felt uncomfortable to bind these elements in plastic to make them stick to a substrate.

I have been granted a VACMA Award (Visual Artist and Craft Maker Award bursary) to learn about making pigments and paints and how to process earth and plants myself to include them in work without using an acrylic based medium.

I approached the mountains and hills, rivers, paths and shores that I draw and paint to collect materials, intending to avoid disturbing the fragile environments as much as possible. Inevitably I did not go very far before encountering places which had already been damaged by human action, by path and road making, extraction, and indirectly though climate change.

Where the edges of the land are crumbling and fraying the landscape is illustrating our relationship with it back to us humans. The materials eroding out of the landscape have become the materials I am using for this project.

This Spring I travelled to Newlyn School of Art to take part in Anita Reynolds’ new Landscape to Print course. Although we were out and about in West Penwith the North West Highands were not far from my mind.

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We worked on trace monotypes and layered gelli prints, and collagraph plates for printing with a press.

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It was an intensive refresh of the potential of each process; from translating sketches and planning plates, experimenting with textures and composition, values, and approaches to mixing colour combinations.

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Now back to the north of Scotland and the contrasting horizon lines of Sutherland and Orkney; pink rock and black cracked cliffs, yellow gorse and green bracken. Time to mix some colour.

Rather than representing any specific viewpoint, I gather together the impactful elements of the landscape as I remember experiencing them. Gradually the themes, colours and shapes emerge: pinks of rock and sand; russet and green bracken; the shape of erratics on the horizon line .

Using sketchbooks and paper, and working through many iterations of mark making, colour mixing, layering and combining materials, gradually a process for this specific landscape begins to build. Like a language, the marks and movements, colours shapes and space hold the memory of being there.

The first sketches I make back in the studio are from memory – the slope of the hill or mass of the mountain and horizon line.

In Sutherland I spend most of my time absorbing the place rather than sketching, noting the things that have the most impact – the rugged mass of Ben Loyal heading west, the pink and grey striations of cliffs at Ceannabeinne , erratics and horizon lines, the colour of the sand and the way the rocks erode. Collected grit, pebbles, peat sand and water will later work their way into work in the studio. Grass, twigs leaves and botanical elements are collected for colour and shape.

Currently I am working on a long term project about Mackay Country or Dùthaich Mhic Aoidh – a geographical area in the North West of Scotland which had its own distinct dialect of Gaelic. By contrast to Orkney it is a dramatic land of Flow country and mountains, rock, lochs, rivers and sea.

Within sight of Orkney across the Pentland Firth, the shared Norse heritage between Mackay Country and Orkney means there are related place-names such as Durness (Sutherland) and Derness ( the Orkney pronunciation of Deerness).

It is likely that Norse folk would sail south from Orkney to Strathnaver where they kept horses. From there they could continue their journeys overland on horseback. Later Orkneymen may have come to Strathnaver to acquire horses (The Clearance village of Rosal in Strathnaver may be named for ON hross-vollr – ‘horse field’).

On my own journeys south through Mackay Country I stop at brochs and crumbling burial tombs, clearance villages and graveyards that link us to the ancestors. Many of their stories and songs are likely unknown to us, but we can still share the mountains with them. In terms of deep geological time we all apprehend them almost simultaneously.

The texture of the mica on the shore; the shape of the erratic boulder balanced on the mountain slope; the pink of the quartzite; the green curl of new bracken; the shade of the hazel trees; dazzling yellow gorse; the sound of water falling; persist and link us. These colours, textures, sounds and sensations are themes within this project.

By using Gaelic language words I hope to grasp fragments of the language my ancestors used, show respect to the present day Gaelic speaking community, and share the sense of ‘belonging/ not belonging’ I recognise when passing the Mackay Country markers.

This summer has been a botanical treat in the Orkney countryside verges, pastures and maritime heaths. Wildflowers have flourished in great swathes of yellow, cream and pink.

It is a great time of year to change process, palette and perspective by focusing on flooers. A break from the big seascapes on canvas I have moved to monoprinting on paper, creating collaged layers in a tiny 10 x 10 cm area. Design and value differences are easier to see but inevitably I can spend as long on these littles as I do on their slightly bigger cousins, adjusting, editing, letting rest, checking with fresh eyes and often ultimately discarding. Those that survive the process are heading off to the Ship of Fools Gallery in Kirkwall.

My first journey across the Firth this summer roughly took the route of my family history – folk cleared from the North West of Sutherland who found a place to make a new life in Strathcarron.

This summer’s trip took in a visit to Mudness Ceramics at Balnakeil to see Martina Macleod’s captivating ceramics and Lotte Glob’s exhibition at An Talla Solais in Ullapool, as well as a visit to Gairloch Museum to see the great gallery space and enjoy the geology and social history exhibits. On to Loch Kishorn and a nod to the ancestors on the way home via Strathnaver.

I flexed my intentions on Eleanor K White’s course at Achintraid which was a great opportunity to spend time in the shadow of the Applecross peninsula and swim with Skye on the western horizon, close to where my Mackay ancestors established the croft at Ardaneaskan.

As ever it was delightful to catch up with folk and feel connected to other painters and makers.

It’s good to get out!

In April I was fortunate enough to be able to return to Newlyn School of Art and be a student on Anita Reynold’s Abstract Landscape course for a second time in person. It was able to revisit Porth Ledden and Priest’s Cove at Cape Cornwall, and this time visit Sancreed Church and Beacon.

Anita’s approach has the right balance of structure and freedom for me, but mostly this was an exercise in connection, and re-establishing a learner mindset. The encouragement to curiosity and experiment in a different environment helps me to return home with fresh eyes, ready for new processes and projects.

Being in Orkney in early winter storms can feel like being at sea; islanders leaning into the wind and weather as if the ground was a pitching deck.

Or, briefly, the glassy calm of winter highs all pink mist and stars, merry dancers and orcas’ breath.

Ship of Fools Gallery Christmas Show in Kirkwall, Orkney.

Winter Show, City Contemporary Art gallery in Perth.