Last week I was invited by an old friend, the artist Nina Pope, to join an online Zoom conversation with a long-standing discussion group of artists she has been part of for twenty years. It was a real pleasure to gather with artists who are based all over the...
I’m delighted to share with you an exploration of this and other questions with the artist Tania Kovats. I met Tania over 20 years ago when we were both on the same artist residency programme in Rome. Although our paths have only crossed once, and briefly at...
How to finish that big creative project? That’s what I’m asking myself right now. Having big creative ideas is easy. Starting with enthusiasm is easy. But seeing creative projects through all the way to completion, turning up day after day when the...
Do you welcome the coming of the dark nights as Autumn closes in? Or do you rage, rage against the dying of the light? At this time of year, when I pull the curtains closed of an evening, I can still hear my mother’s voice commenting doomily, “The nights are drawing...
The answer seems obvious. But it’s not so simple. In Scotland’s mild, damp climate we tend to take water for granted. But just now the loch beside our house is as low as I’ve ever seen it. The expanse of dried mud and stone all around its shore keeps on getting wider...
There’s a very particular quality to the light here in Orkney, as anyone who has been here will know. Maybe it’s to do with the Northerly latitude, or the open landscape and big skies, or the presence of the sea and bright lochs all around us. Orcadian...
