Scottish Landscape Art – Scottish Landscape Paintings

So then it has been another slightly strange few months. My sight, which has been very bad for many years, has deteriorated further in recent times and as such, even the easier tasks and walks have become somewhat more problematic. We’ve still been getting out walking, but not doing some of the more challenging mountain routes we used to do. Instead we’ve started to explore more of the lower level tracks. We have had several short breaks away and one of the best of these took us over to Angus to visit our good friend Norma and to join her on a fabulous wander in the low hills around Glen Esk. The broad gentle paths here were perfect for me, but still led us up to around 600 m and so gave us some great views.

Autumn Holiday in Achmelvich

We also had an extra holiday, spending a week in a caravan in Achmelvich in Assynt in September. Anyone who has followed these blogs over the years, will know that we have visited this beautiful place in Assynt many times …….but never in the autumn. The colours were great and it was so nice to see this familiar landscape as the trees were turning and the sun getting lower. It has always been a very peaceful and quiet place when we have visited it in May and so we were rather surprised to find it a lot busier and sadly, more noisy. We walked along the beach most days, but instead of just being accompanied by the sounds of the waves, wind, birds and the chatter of people enjoying themselves, the calm this time, was spoilt by the constant annoying buzz of drones. Heck, I must be getting more grumpy as I become older ….. or maybe I have just become more aware of the beauty of natural sound now that I need to listen more and have started recording my surroundings rather than sketch them.

Latest Landscape Paintings of Scotland

I am pleased to say that I am still painting, albeit far more slowly than before. I have generally been working on the larger paintings but have managed a couple of the long thin 76 x 23 cm pieces ….. although these take me almost as long to do as the 80 x 80 cm ones. When I look back at my records, I see that I used to get somewhere in the region of around 30 paintings completed each year. Now I reckon I’m lucky if I can get a dozen completed in the same time. For the moment I’ve held my prices but of course as there is less work available and each piece takes so much longer, I will have to increase my prices before too long. So then, not wanting to sound too much like a sales pitch, but if you’ve ever considered buying one of my paintings, well, it could be a good time to do so! Enough said! Here are images of several of the paintings I’ve completed this year:

Next Art and Sound Exhibition

Finally, you will remember that back in March this year, in collaboration with audio engineers Graham Byron and Drew Kirkland, we were to have held an exhibition of our audio visual work at The Barony Centre in West Kilbride here in North Ayrshire. Sadly the show had to be cancelled due to the COVID 19 situation at the time. I am pleased to say however, that we have been invited to hold the exhibition at The Barony Centre in the autumn next year instead. The dates pencilled in are September 29^th – October 22^nd 2022. We will be holding a meeting in early February to finalise everything and I’ll give more details then. That said of course, as I write this, news of the latest COVID 19 variant is causing concern …… so we’ll just have to wait and see how things develop. In the meantime, why not watch and listen to our video exhibition; just click on the link below. The video contains three of our audio painting projects along with a small selection of my usual Scottish landscape paintings and drawings:

Autumn 2020

A quick update from Studio J

When I wrote my last blog, I was, like most of the rest of the country, working from home and in lock down. As I think I said at the time, working from a poorly lit upstairs room at home wasn’t particularly easy. That said I did get three new paintings completed by the time I returned to my studio at the start of July. So not exactly prolific but time well spent. The paintings are all based on sound recordings I made back in December while we were walking a section of the Great Glen Way along the shores of Loch Lochy.

During the summer, I went to Graham Byron’s audio studio and together we mixed a three section soundtrack to play with the paintings. Graham has created a video version of the work and we hope to have everything finished before too long. Obviously the latest restrictions here in the Central Belt of Scotland have meant that we haven’t been able to work together in the studio again recently but we meet on-line and exchange ideas and audio and video files. It’s a bit slower, but we can continue to do this work and of course it’s very important as we are still hopeful that our exhibition will go ahead in the Barony Centre in West Kilbride in March…… and these new audio visual works will be the centrepiece of the show.

Anyway, here’s a bit of good news:

A quick rewind to December last year

You may remember that about a year ago I was asked whether I was interested in being included in a arts documentary commissioned by BBC 4. In short, I agreed and spent a couple of days with a small team from the company making the programme. Anyway, a few days ago I was told that the programme, called “Disordered Eye”, will be transmitted on BBC 4, on November 4^th at 9pm:

Now that I know for definite that it’s going out on national TV, I’m getting a bit nervous I have to admit! Oh well, it’ll only be a very small part of the overall programme and so if the painting and audio are included, it’ll be a great way to get the work out to a much larger audience. Fingers crossed!

Summer walks

The day after the travel restrictions were lifted in early July, we headed back up into the Southern Highlands for our first hill walk for many months. We avoided all the popular tops figuring that everyone would be doing what we were now that the shackles were off and so headed back to some small hills above Glen Ogle. With legs that were well out of condition, we made our way up to the small cairn that marks the summit of Beinn Leabhain at around 700 m. We’ve visited this top several times over the last few years but the views make it well worth while, especially when looking out over Loch Tay towards the big hills of the Ben Lawers group. It was just so good to be out wandering the hills again.

We followed this trip by visits to other small less frequented hills that we know and love; Beinn Inverveigh, (that lies above Loch Tulla), Beinn Chaorach near Tyndrum and a few weeks ago, Beinn Eich in the Luss Hills.

We tried at all times to minimise the impact of us visiting these beautiful areas and so always carried disinfectant wipes to clean any gates we passed through or stiles we crossed. By avoiding the popular hills we avoided contact with others and so we left almost no trace of our visits except a few boot prints. Fantastic. With the new restrictions we’re staying within Ayrshire for the time being and are waiting to hear the latest advice from the Scottish government. But hey, we’re really lucky as Ayrshire has miles of beautiful countryside and just ten minutes walk from my studio here, we have a huge beach that stretches all the way to Troon. So then, it’ll be a few more local walks for the time being I think.

Finally, just to remind you that despite everything, I’m still in business, still working away in my little studio here on Irvine’s Harbourside. We’ve been making a few changes to my website recently and you’ll see some of my more recent paintings there. If you are looking for something special for your wall, do go and have a look. I can ship work easily so there no problem if you can’t get to the studio and you will be supporting one of Ayrshire’s long serving artists during these very difficult times.