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am bodach | Scottish Landscape Art - Scottish Landscape Paintings

Posts Tagged ‘am bodach’

‘Mists, Am Bodach’

 'Mists, Am Bodach', Acrylic & Pastel, 2008, 30 x 30 cm

‘Mists, Am Bodach’

 

‘Mists, Am Bodach’, Acrylic & Pastel, 2008, 30 x 30 cm

I did this small painting five years ago but it is always one that I’ve really liked.  It is now available as a mounted digital print (image size approximately 27 cm x 27 cm), price £50 plus P&P in UK.  An image of this painting is also available as a small gift card, (blank inside), price £2.50 each or available by post in packs of 4 cards for £10 plus P&P.  . This is one of four different cards I’ve recently had printed.

Both the prints and the cards are available at ‘the gallery on the corner’ in Edinburgh and also ‘Blairmore Gallery’, near Dunoon.  They are also available at my studio or by post…..contact me for details: keith@keithsalmon.org  or Tel: 07742 437425.

This is a very tentative start to trying to develop this side of my practice.  I hope to get more types of cards printed and then get them into a range of shops and galleries throughout Scotland.  As and when this happens I’ll of course let you know.  The other 3 cards will be shown as ‘Artwork of the week’ over the next 3 weeks.

‘On the ridge to Am Bodach, Spring’

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‘On the ridge to Am Bodach, Spring’, Acrylic & Pastel, 2011, 80 x 80 cm

This is another of the new larger (80 x 80 cm) paintings that I’ve been working on recently.  It’s a completely new working of a composition I’ve used before but this time with thicker, larger marks and more intense colours.  Although still based on the wonderful section of ridge between the top of the Devil’s Staircase and Am Bodach, this piece is I guess more about the paint, the composition and the marks.  I’ve only just stopped working on it so it’s too early to say yet whether it’s ‘finished’ or not.  This is one of the paintings I’m doing for my exhibition in Speyer in October.  I’m hoping to take around 10 of these new 80 x 80 cm paintings along with 10 other smaller pieces…all to be completed and shipped out around the 7th October.  The exhibition opens on Friday 14th October and will run for two weeks.  Full details nearer the time.

‘Overlooking Glen Coe’

26 'Overlooking Glen Coe', Acrylic & Pastel,

'Overlooking Glen Coe'

‘Overlooking Glen Coe’, Acrylic & Pastel

This painting is based on a day a while back when we were making our way along the ridge that twists its way between the top of the Devils staircase and Am Bodach. It’s a route we’ve taken a few times and it makes for superb but easy walking in the heart of Glen Coe. On this occasion the weather was fine but as we neared the high point at just over 900 m, a thick band of very low cloud drifted up the glen and started to obscure the hills. It didn’t last long and our hill stayed clear, but it made for a very atmospheric scene as we looked across the glen towards the flanks of Stob Coire Raineach.

‘Overlooking Glen Coe’ is currently on display as part of my exhibition at The Strathearn Gallery in Crieff. The exhibition opens on Saturday 12th February and continues until March 12th. For more details and to see all 45 paintings in the exhibition please visit: www.strathearn-gallery.com

‘Towards Am Bodach, Glen Coe’

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'Towards Am Bodach, Glen Coe'

‘Towards Am Bodach, Glen Coe’, Acrylic & Pastel, 2011, 30 x 30 cm

This is my most recent small painting. It’s a re-working of a piece I did last year, but looks at the view from a slightly different position. The ridge starts as a broad rough grassy shoulder at the point where the West Highland Way crosses at the top of the Devils Staircase. It gradually turns into a more defined ridge and continues over several tops all the way to Am Bodach …and the start of the Aonach Eagach. It makes wonderful wild but easy walking for us lesser mortals who avoid the really serious stuff ahead and the views the whole way along are just spectacular …being as it is, in the heart of Glen Coe. A grand day out, especially if followed almost all the way to Am Bodach before following an awkward little path down to the A82 in the base of the glen and then following the old military road back to your start point. I’m really rather pleased with this little painting as I think it combines the paint and the pastel well. Its first public airing will be at The Strathearn Gallery as part of my solo exhibition, ‘On the hill – impressions of the Scottish upland landscape’. The exhibition runs 12th February – 12th March.

Snap!

West from Cul Mor, Assynt

West from Cul Mor, Assynt

I’ve loved taking photographs ever since buying my first camera, (a little Ilford instamatic) through a special offer on the back of a cereal box, back in 1969.  It wasn’t the finest of cameras but at the age of ten it seemed pretty good to me.  I bought it just before we went on holiday to Eire and I came back with 12 (albeit rather fuzzy) photos of the Dingle peninsular.  What is more, they were the only photographs of the holiday  ….my father had failed to load his 35 mm film properly and came back to find an unexposed roll of film in his camera!

That little camera certainly got me into snapping photos whenever we went anywhere and before long I moved up market a little and got myself a very solid Zenith SLR. This camera was certainly not a sexy beast, (I think it was made out of plate steel) and I  lugged it around along with a great little Weston light meter, for many years.   By the time I was at Falmouth School of Art in the early 1980’s it was a bit of a joke to many of my friends who had spent much of their grants on new hi tech cameras.  In the Easter break in 1981 a small group of us spent three weeks up on North Uist enjoying the wild beaches, the loch strewn land and the isolated hills of Beinn Mhor and Hecla.  One of the group forgot to take a spare battery for his camera …and it ran out on the first week  …no place to buy a replacement of course.  Another friend, Paul, dropped his camera and being made out of plastic, the top cracked.  And so it was yours truly  (feeling rather smug) with my battered old iron clad manual Zenith who came away with the photos.

From Am Bodach, the Mamores

From Am Bodach, the Mamores

The Zenith, (now almost 35 years old,) still works although I put it into retirement at least ten years ago) and I’ve now moved into the digital age!!  As my sight deteriorated I found I was taking more and more bad photographs.  Using film and finding that 22 out of the roll of 24 were either tilting the sea out, had a thumb in the corner, or were simply just dreadful …well, it was getting expensive….hence my getting a digital camera. Now I can tilt the skyline as much as I want, take hundreds of dreadful pictures and get all five digits in front of the lens …and it doesn’t cost me anything …and if you snap enough you tend to get a couple of reasonable pictures most days.

On the edge of Rannoch Moor

On the edge of Rannoch Moor

Anyway, the reason for rambling on about photographs and cameras is that we’re holding a small Christmas Affordable Art Fair at the Harbour Arts  Centre in Irvine on Sunday 5th December and Sunday 19th December.  Around about a dozen of the artists and makers at the Courtyard Studios will be taking part with a wide range of paintings, drawings, prints, jewellery and cards on sale.  I’ve decided to show a dozen photographs taken on the Scottish hills during the last 10 or so years.  Most of them are my own but I’ve also included a couple that my partner Anita took….with her permission of course!  It’ll be interesting to see what reaction I get with them.

The Cobbler

The Cobbler

So, the event runs from 12 noon until 4 pm on 5th & 19th December.  The Courtyard Studios are only two doors away from the Harbour Arts Centre on Harbour Street in Irvine.  I’ll have my studio open as well so if you want to see some paintings too, then just drop by.  There should be other studios open at the Courtyard too.  I look forward to meeting anyone who can get along.

A walk last March

Approaching A'Chailleach

Approaching A'Chailleach

It’s amazing just how quickly a year passes. Earlier today I was thinking about where we could go for a walk later this week. I decided to see where we went this time last year and found that we’d been up on the ridge above Glen Coe. My old friend from college days, the sculptor Keith Barrett was over from North Shields for a brief visit and so we decided to have a day on the hills.

The walk we took him on is not a difficult one, but it is in one of the most spectacular regions of Scotland. After an early start we arrived at the base of the Devils Staircase (the point where the West Highland Way climbs up away from Glen Coe and over to Kinlochleven. I had hoped for beautiful weather so that Keith could see the amazing scenery around …but alas we found thick heavy low cloud shrouding all the hills and there was rain in the air.

Breaking weather, above Glen Coe

Breaking weather, above Glen Coe

We headed off all the same, following the well built path of the West Highland Way as it gained height and zigzagged its way onto the shoulder of the hill. At the high point we turned left, leaving the popular and well used path and headed off up along the broad grassy and very wet ridge. The weather hadn’t improved at all and we were into the cloud … not even the slightest of views …so infuriating after travelling for almost two and a half hours to get there! It was looking like being a bit of a miserable day but as we gained height we got into some big patches of snow and even in the cloud this makes things look so much better.

After a while the ridge narrows somewhat and you follow the edge of a fine escarpment …which if we wanted to could be followed all the way to the start of the famous Aonach Eagach ridge. To our amazement as we gained height the cloud started to break and brightness started to appear. The escarpment had the remains of a cornice all the way along …in places you could see where it was breaking away, creating deep cracks in the snow that were a deep blue colour.

The Glen Coe mountains

The Glen Coe mountains

A strong bitterly cold wind was blowing now and clearing the cloud…all around us appeared snow capped peaks …it really was an amazing sight. We sat near the top of A’Chailleach ( just over 900m), sheltered from the wind by a large crag and just enjoyed the wildness and splendour of Glen Coe. We hadn’t seen a soul since leaving the WHW and it remained like this as we wandered our way back in bright sunshine. A classic little day in the Scottish Highlands …we had a bit of nearly everything.

Hopefully we’ll get something equally good later this week when we head out with another old friend from Falmouth School of Art. The last time I walked with him it rained heavily for six hours; better luck this time!

Photos by Anita Groves

114 'Towards Am Bodach, Glen Coe', Acrylic & Pastel, 2009, 30 x 30 cm

'Towards Am Bodach, Glen Coe'