Artist Statement:
The fire of light and the breath of air, the depths of land and the dance of trees make landscape a fantastic reality through which life can wander or surge with the freedom of a dreamer. I sit and draw the nature that has come to be manifest in an aesthetic display far removed from chaos or system or motive. My pencil contains my box of paints as my heart and eye contain a love for the mountain.
Member: Society of Scottish Artists and Aberdeen Artists Society.
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2014
Acrylic on canvas
Stretched, framed
60 x 60cm
Taken from a split-second eye opening at dawn on freezing 1st of September 2013 and reinforced by impressions and drawings made summer 2014, this painting of mountain dawn at altitude 2000m, recreates light, cloud, rock and river. (In the Encamp parish of Andorra)
SOLD
2014
Acrylic on canvas
Stretched, unframed
50 x 50cm
Red rock spires and walls beneath a perturbed sky or rose-coloured clouds contorting in their passage across a blue sky. A hidden and unvisited region, a source of mysteries and rivers with underground passages where the borders and physical laws of our surface world are subverted. Here the fairies who wash their clothes with golden rods can appear, possessed of riches in their sparkling cleanliness.
SOLD
2016
Acrylic on canvas
Stretched, unframed
90 x 60cm
A protecting oak grove above and beyond which hangs the pure blue and featureless canopy of the summer sky. The oaks are tall above the valley of a dry river, an un-flowing bed of brown fallen leaves. After years of visits and study, after an exceptionally heavy rain, the river did flow! Brown as the leaves it carried it danced. And I stood in a place where motion had long been exiled beneath a mosaic of leaves and marvelled again at a new river.
SOLD
2005
Oil on canvas
Stretched, unframed
61 x 61cm
River Lusa landscape near Breakish, Isle of Skye
SOLD
2015
Acrylic on canvas
Stretched, unframed
60 x 60cm
Beltane (1st of May Celtic summer) and the moon is on the wane above the tall beech trunks found along the shady banks of the River Salz. Mary Magdalen left the Holy Land and came to France with the Mother of God. Alone she spent thirty years in a wooded space, through which a river ran centrally, hills and mountains surrounding. This is a painting of that space, identified as the valley of the River Salz.
SOLD
2006
Oil on canvas
Stretched, unframed
60 x 80cm
Seen from the Black Cuillin, the Red Cuillin across Loch Slapin is engulfed by mist.
SOLD
2017
Oil on canvas
Stretched, unframed
55 x 46cm
From a break on the heavily wooded descending path suddenly a view opens onto mountainsides which are painted yellow by the sunset.
SOLD
2011
Oil on canvas
Framed – Douglas fir with multicoloured brushwork created by artist
81 x 102 x 1.5cm
To the south beyond Canigou the steep and densely wooded mountains of Vallespir rise beneath a summer sky. Nature seems to take on the forms of its own will, the forms of its own heart’s desire.
SOLD
2016
Acrylic on canvas
Stretched, unframed
50 x 50cm
Against a black sky Mars and Venus are visible to the right. An immense thunder dragon climbs the high mountain and traverses the summit. Strands of mist trail across snow patches where the rocky precipices are vividly patterned.
SOLD
2007
Oil on canvas
Stretched, unframed
45 x 60cm
Beinne na Greine on the watershed between the Kylerhea River and Abhainn Lusa in South Skye occupies the painter’s hand, heart and soul. The ‘Mountain of the Sun’ takes its name from its south facing ridges, drenched with sun in summer. But in winter the outlying Cuillin can be ‘black with ice or with cold wet ooze, the ramparts of grim precipices’. (Sorley Maclean)
SOLD
2008
Oil on canvas
Stretched, unframed
61 x 76cm
South Skye landscape. A last glow of light from beyond the horizon imbues the darkness of these western clouds with the power of a sun now grown faint in the approach of long night. The mists linger over Loch Slapin.
SOLD
2008
Oil on canvas
Stretched, unframed
61 x 61cm
‘Sgùrr Alasdair is the highest mountain in Britain outwith the mainland. It is an amazing viewpoint with the sweeping Cuillin Ridge, tremendous cliffs, lochs, the sea and scattered islands in all directions.’ (walkhighlands.co.uk)
SOLD
2014
Acrylic on canvas
Stretched, unframed
61 x 61cm
In the foreground the first ferns of summer sprout while in the distance the mountain is still snowy. Peaceful valleys roll between.
SOLD
2015
Acrylic on canvas
Stretched, unframed
60 x 50cm
Soon after dawn an approaching storm dramatically engulfs the sky. A hare runs for cover against fierce wind. The viewer has climbed opposite to note the rising intricacies of the mountain flank. On the road through the Gorges de l’Aude.
SOLD
2016
Acrylic on canvas
Stretched, unframed
80 x 80cm
The River Aude near the old Abbey of Our Lady of Alet flows turbulent, shallow and stony between the curtains of long leafed willow margins.
SOLD
2006
Oil on canvas
Stretched, unframed
60 x 80cm
Landscape of South Skye at Aiseag, Breakish, Isle of Skye.
SOLD
2016
Acrylic on canvas
Stretched, unframed
70 x 90cm
A studio painting made from more than a dozen detailed pen and pencil drawings of sycamore, oak, chestnut, mountain, rock and herb.
SOLD
2016
Acrylic on canvas
Stretched, unframed
80 x 80cm
An image made at the first safe opportunity of a descent from beyond. Midsummer snow fields lead up to impregnable rocks. The sky is turbulent, the way precipitous.
SOLD
2015
Acrylic on canvas
Stretched, unframed
50 x 50cm
The River Aude is compressed in the depths of its gorge. The influential moon is beyond mountains where night lies down. In this painting of evening perfumes where rock is a veil there is nowhere to stand. The trees offer up their spring flowers, the beauty of blossom acquiesces to the element of rock which contains every simplicity — curve, zigzag, cut, star-ray, hole, peak.
SOLD
2007
Oil on canvas
Stretched, unframed
60 x 80cm
Bagh na Dhubh-Airde, Bay of the Dark Height; view from there looking across Loch Eishort to Beinn Bhuidhe, the yellow mountain. Rain is on the mountain and the loch is cold and dark and will soon be hidden entirely.
SOLD
2010
Oil on canvas
Framed (walnut)
86 x 71 x 1.75cm
Light-play in grass either side of a stony track descends to a tangle of bushes out of which rise two Scots pines. The distant valley is a sea of cloud from which rise high mountains. Overhead the golden limbs of a cherry tree descend, their leaves catching sunlight. The last cherry of the season hangs in the top left.
SOLD
Oil on canvas
Stretched, unframed
80 x 60cm
Landscape of the far Cuillin, Breakish, Isle of Skye.
SOLD
2007
Oil on canvas
Stretched, unframed
45 x 61cm
View is from Luib across the loch to Trembling Ridge — Leathad Chrithinn.
SOLD
2007
Oil on canvas
Stretched, unframed
45 x 61cm
Loch Ainort, view from Aricharanach, across the loch to Trembling Ridge — Leathad Chrithinn. Painted outdoors in complementary oranges and blues, catching a tranquil afternoon.
SOLD
2008
Oil on canvas
Stretched, unframed
80 x 60cm
The dark permanence of jagged mountain is complemented by the soft ephemerality of passing mist. Across the water from a rocky shore the viewer is presented with a moment of ancient procession.
SOLD
2007
Oil on canvas
Stretched, unframed
61 x 61cm
Landscape of the Cuillin ridge near Breakish, Isle of Skye.
SOLD
2012
Oil on canvas
Framed
81 x 66cm
A jewel at sunset, the commune of Saint-Just-et-le-Bézu in the Aude sparkles with a yellow green sky beyond red oak branches. The distant mountains although sunk in blackness are corrugated with perpendicular red rock in light from the sun ray. The foreground is black like the mountains, but the saint’s forest is alive; as if burning with leaves of flame, dancing in its last moments of visibility to carry flower forms of light toward dark night.
SOLD
2008
Oil on Board
Stretched, framed
75 x 75cm
The selkies or Seal People find their homes on the shores of South Skye at Breacais upon the large rocks. At times of full moon man can walk to and observe an incredible undersea world elevated and available for a phase.
SOLD
2014
Acrylic on canvas
Framed (cherry and black wood with gold metal)
64.5 x 64.5 x 2cm
Orchids, grass, massive tree roots, overhanging leaves and standing dead trees are arranged against a distant mountain Bugarach beneath a troubled sky. (Le Serbairou is a locality in Aude south of Rennes les Bains.)
SOLD
2008
Oil on board
Stretched, framed
58 x 68cm
The geology of Skye is of great interest and warrants close inspection. Some days one has the privilege of alternately being bitten by midges and smitten by hailstones. Despite this the tidal rock is a veritable treasure chest.
SOLD
2011
Oil on canvas
Stretched, unframed
46 x 61cm
A view to sacred Canigou from the foot of a great pine and chestnuts on the Col Roque Jalere. September, and already the chestnut leaves are brown. The valley hides itself in a sea of mist above which the mountain rises red as a heart.
SOLD
2019
Oil on canvas
Stretched, unframed
50 x 61cm
A westering sun casts a yellow light through a transparent forest where blue shadow reaches out from the undergrowth. Two paths converge on the way to the West. (Foothills of the Pyrenees Orientales)
SOLD
2016
Oil on canvas
Stretched, unframed
61 x 50cm
The turquoise sculptress River Agly has formed a rough and moving relief, the Gorges de Galamus; carved for two hundred million years out of rare dolomitic limestone from the Black Jurassic that has arisen from her springs. The painting is a study of stones, a close reading of the water.
SOLD
2017
Acrylic on canvas
Stretched, unframed
60 x 60cm
Canigou in featureless blue dominates a sea of morning mist. Perched on a granite peak the artist sees into rocky abyss, mountain lake and rolling green hills. The rays of morning in white traverse the scene.
SOLD
2015
Acrylic on canvas
Stretched, unframed
50 x 50cm
Between two dead pines left and a leafy linden tree right, the blood of dawn coils over and on the peak of Canigou. We are in a particular forest of many needles shortly after dawn. The moment is becoming crystal clear.
SOLD
2012
Oil on canvas
Framed
76 x 61cm
On an autumn afternoon with the sun disappearing behind the high hill of forest a monumental beech tree stands in its brown leafed phase on a bed of fallen leaves. The River Salz cascades green in the left foreground to balance the bowl of the beech. The forested hill is a pattern of perpendiculars rendered with brush strokes whose action is liberal and expressive.
SOLD
2019
Oil on canvas
Stretched, unframed
50 x 70cm
From a level foreground at altitude where farmland is in disuse one can see across the white ridges that form natural barriers to the walker. To the right the high valley of the Aude; straight ahead the Eastern Pyrenees exult in cloud form and summer aspect.
SOLD
2019
Oil on canvas
Stretched, unframed
40 x 50cm
Between the pillars of two mountain pine trees the view across sixty kilometres as the crow flies includes the Peaks of Bugarach on the left and Cardou on the right. Tree form travels centrally down from the arboreal mass of a leaf obscured sky, the foreground a swirling of plants.
SOLD
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