Laura Drever organised and curated an online exhibition to raise funds for MND over on her website. I was very grateful to have been asked to contribute to this event alongside so many artists and makers I admire.
It was a huge success raising over £8000.
At the end of 2020 I have work in a few different places – The Christmas Collection at The Exhibition Room in The Old Library in Kirkwall The Pier Arts Centre’s Annual Open Exhibition in Stromness, The An Talla Solais online Members’ Exhibition, and in ‘Cabinet’, the art and craft shop within An Talla Solais.
It has been good to get some of the previously unreleased Orkney Sky and Orkney Shore series out into the world and for some of them to have found new homes. I have really appreciated being able to visit and view the variety of work in the local exhibitions in these covid-restricted times.
This year I’m really pleased to have two paintings in the An Talla Solais Members’ Online Exhibition. Over the past few summers I have been able to see a wide range of artists’ exhibitions at the gallery in Ullapool, and been able to attend openings and go to talks by artists. Looking back I recognise how influential elements of these experiences have been in the development of my own practice, so it is feels particularly significant to have this connection this year when I couldn’t visit as usual.
The visual arts centre is a charity which offers exhibitions, art-based activities, support and other opportunities for the local community and for practising artists across the North west of Scotland. Have a look around the exhibition here.
Most years at this time I make a trip to the Highlands.
It had been a year since I had last crossed The Firth and left Orkney. My annual summer trip to Bridge House Art in Ullapool had been a casualty of Covid, so this time I returned to one of my favourite places in Wester Ross.
The scale and drama of the Assynt and Coigach mountains are a profound contrast to the Orkney landscape I am used to for most of the year. The huge personalities of the mountains demand attention, cloaked in vast sweeps of rusty velvet. The vivid colours of autumn trees and the silhouettes of larch, spruce and pine are refreshing respite from the grip of the relentless Orcadian horizon.
This year it felt more valuable than ever to experience and appreciate these differences.
I think soaking up a sense of place, walking and looking, sitting and watching, can sometimes be as valuable as drawing and responding to make a sketchbook record. I brought most of the colours and shapes home in my head, and returned with fresh eyes for the familiar.
A casualty of lockdown and Covid regulations was my solo show planned for September 2020 at The Exhibition Room at The Old Library in Kirkwall. Instead I will be showing a small selection of 6 paintings called ‘Orkney Summer’ in Archive Coffee the café/bar at The Old Library in a pop-up show, and online, over a couple of weeks.
In the first few weeks of lockdown it became clear that many planned ‘in person’ art courses were not going to happen but with great relief I learned that Bridge House Art in Ullapool were setting up daily, then weekly, tasks for their Summer School students with a weekly coffee break on zoom. The tutors also created online versions of their week long summer courses to sign up to with contributions from invited artists. Over the last few years, like many others, my annual visit or two to BHA have become a touchstone for my painting year so the contact and community that grew out of the tasks and discussions was sustaining!
Images from a few of the wide variety of tasks the Bridge House Art team created...
As art teachers adapted to a virtual environment the abundance of online art courses grew – an opportunity to take advantage of online access to courses which otherwise have been too far away to consider, like Emily Ball’s ‘Floribunda’ and Karen Stamper’s ‘Sketchbooks’. I also continued to enjoy Paintbox Art School’s rich choice of online offerings and Lewis Noble’s growing library of video tutorials.
Images from the Emily Ball ‘Floribunda’ course…
In May I sent a few small pieces of art to The Whitehouse Gallery in Kircudbright. Unfortunately most of the group show ‘Connections’ coincided with lockdown but being included in the show with artists I admire was very rewarding. Showing at The Whitehouse is somewhat of a family tradition, my mother Liz Mackay having exhibited there over the years.
In November 2019 I contributed a few pieces of work to the annual Christmas Exhibition at the Old Library in Kirkwall. It was lovely to see a small collection of my paintings hanging together, alongside the artwork of well-established and admired local artists and makers.
In November 2019 I went to Lund Studios in Yorkshire for a workshop run by Lewis Noble. Over three days he shared his approach to sketching outdoors and the process he uses to develop work from these sketches back in the studio. I was interested in ‘losing’ the horizon for a while as it is such a dominating feature of the landscape here in Orkney, and developing my sketchbook practice in an expressive way that could use as a jumping off point for larger work.
Every summer for the last few years I have gone to Bridge House Art in Ullapool for a week or two of summer school courses to develop my practice. These visits have become foundational to my work and the feedback from the tutors will often strongly influence how I approach work for the following year. These are images of some work in development begun at Bridge House Art School in Ullapool in August 2019. Mixed media on paper various sizes.
Lesley Mackay Art 