the landscape

While exploring Scottish mythology it is hard to ignore the landscape it exists within and the ground on which it was created. Like all mythologies it is rooted in nature and was used to explain that which our ancestors could not understand. The Northern lights for example were ‘fairy pipers playing enchanting music while the merry couples dance across the northern sky’. The winter ascending across the land was the reign of the goddess Cailleach beginning and bizarre happenings the work of brownies alike.

Focusing on the colours and tones I aim to capture a moment and a feeling rather than a scene. The movement in the air and the violence of the sea, the same sea that our ancestors would have looked out at as they told each other stories of selkies swimming, intermingled with the seals, of the goddess Cailleach and fairy pipers. How alive it can seem, broiling with rage and wrath and yet for me it evokes a sense of place and belonging. To be faced with your own insignificance when looking out at a vast landscape is humbling and yet comforting, creating a sense of freedom in your own immateriality.