“Immerse” 2022, Acrylic and silver leaf on aluminium panel, 90cm x 110cm Water and time are deeply connected. Over the last year I have been making a series of large scale works that explore this connection. I watch the water and then I try to draw it. I catch it in...
If you’ve read my book The Clearing you’ll know I’m a big fan of the artist Agnes Martin. I’ve been thinking about her work and life a lot recently. When the world is falling to bits and it feels ridiculous to spend my time drawing pictures I remind myself of what...
What is it that draws our eye to the line of the sea horizon? Do you, like me, instinctively pause, take a few deep breaths and just gaze? Why is it that in these anxious times, when calamities seem to bear down on us one after the other with no end in sight, that...
It was a great pleasure to be visited in my Birsay studio by Kirsteen Stewart last week. Kirsteen wears so many creative hats it’s hard to keep up with her! She is a designer of fashion, textiles and homewares, is well known as a skilful and enabling art educator with...
This weekend I played host in my studio to a group from the Friends of the RSA who were visiting Orkney for a week. Quite apart from the well-timed need for a spot of tidying up, it was a pleasure to open my space to such an interested, curious, engaged group of...
So I got COVID, finally. Or COVID got me. It fairly knocked me out, so last week I had a few days of not being able to do as much as usual, and my brain was fogged and sluggish. I found myself gazing out of the window a lot. So I’m returning to a pet subject of mine...
