BORDERS COUNTRY

I N T R O

Borders Country (Paintings below) was a summer painting project of 2015, and just the kind of deep dive I love: traveling a landscape while reading its history and culture. The plan was to work across the Scottish Borders from west to east, from Dumfriesshire through the forested river valleys and the old abbey towns of Jedburgh, Melrose and Kelso, following the River Tweed down towards the Berwickshire coast and on to Lindisfarne. The Borders were familiar ground: the Tweed near Peebles has been a family picnic spot for as long as I can remember, so this was a journey through my own memories as much as through the country itself.

It is a landscape rich with history, the old debatable lands fought over for centuries, scattered with ruined abbeys and castles and remembered in the Border Ballads and in the writing of Walter Scott. The feel of the ancient Borders runs subtly through the work: the exhibition took its title from the ballad Erlinton, and the greenwood of the ballads was brought to life in the woods I was painting in the green months of May and June. The birches and the dense, light-filled undergrowth of places like Glentress and Gladhope, looked to me like verdant tapestries.

The paintings were made on wood and canvas and ranged from tiny studies to large panels, the subjects were sun through trees, the shimmer of light on the Tweed, a hawk held motionless above the water. Among them were Birch, Gladhope, a tall woodland in moody light, and Hawk, River Tweed, in which the bird hovers over the water waiting for fish.

The series was shown at the Whitespace Gallery, Edinburgh, in July 2015. Reviewing the show, arts critic Vivien Devlin praised its luminous, open-air vision of the Borders and the “exquisite artistry” of Hawk, River Tweed, where the hovering bird seems to pause time over the water.

P A I N T I N G S