Kintail to Ardban

I N T R O

The Kintail to Ardban series follows a single journey, made in autumn 2020: north through the mountains of Kintail, over the high pass of the Bealach na Ba, and down to Ardban, a remote stretch of coast on the Applecross peninsula on the west coast of Scotland. I began the paintings during a week’s stay there, sketching from the car and working the studies up in oil on wood. The earlier works are immersed in the rainy Kintail mountain valleys, with the greens and ochres and the russet of turning bracken; the later ones turn to the coast, to the shifting moods of the sea at Ardban, the Atlantic oak woods that grow down to the shore, and the distinct light of the west coast A long history runs beneath the place and found its way into the work: ancient Christian pilgrimage, the traces of communities cleared from these coasts, and the Hebridean psalm singing that seems to move like the sea itself. The series was shown in A Subtle Touch, a three-person exhibition at the Limetree Gallery, Bristol, in 2020.

P A I N T I N G S