Tag Archives: mixed media painting

'Tràigh Bàn nam Manach (white beach of the monks)’. Mixed media on 16x16" wood. Rose Strang 2026

White beach of the monks

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Above: Tràigh Bàn nam Manach (white beach of the monks). Mixed media on 16×16″ wood. Rose Strang 2026

You know this view very well if you’ve walked the beaches of Iona. And what a lovely, poetic name the beach has: Tràigh Bàn nam Manach (pronounced trree baan nam manach). Trill the the ‘r’ like you’re lightly breathing out the word ‘tree’ fast and that gives you that silent but still there ‘gh’ in ‘traigh’). Now read it out with the emphasis in bold above, and you get the poetic rhythm of it.

All the more surprising, then, that this particular beach is named for the monks who died there in one of many Viking massacres that took place around Britain between the 8th to late 10th centuries.

This massacre of fifteen monks and an Abbot took place in AD 986. It’s difficult for us, or the average person at least, to imagine the mindset of either Vikings, or the monks of Iona at that time. 986 seems so long ago to us, and to them too, Calum Cille’s time would have been several centuries ago.

But that mindset endured. Their way of thinking was not so much self-sacrificial. It was more that their vows to protect all that was sacred came before their life itself.They wouldn’t run when attacked.

So if Vikings (whose belief was that fearlessly, skilfully fighting and killing for what you wanted was the pinnacle of human endeavour) decided they liked the look of your land or anything else, they’d just take it. ‘Immovable object meets irresistible force’ you could say.

It’s not what you feel, walking along that beach. In fact, back in 2018 I was painting within the very rocks on which the monks were killed, and I didn’t ‘pick up’ on anything dark there at all.

Those monks were reconciled to their death in ways we find humbling and strange today. Like ancient Japanese poets of Haiku, they attended to the here and now, the Zen of everyday life.

Years ago I bought a collection of Irish verse from ancient to modern times and my favourites were those anonymous, very early, Haiku-like monastic verses, take this one for example:

How lovely it is today!

The sunlight breaks and flickers

on the margin of my book

And immediately I’m transported to Iona in the 8th century, where a monk sits at his lectern. Or perhaps outside amongst the marram grass, as he illuminates a manuscript on a lovely day in spring, his hands warmed at last, finding beauty in the way light falls on the margins of his parchment. Feeling gratitude for simple things in the here and now.

'Tràigh Bàn nam Manach (white beach of the monks)’. Mixed media on 16x16" wood. Rose Strang 2026

‘Tràigh Bàn nam Manach (white beach of the monks)’. Mixed media on 16×16″ wood. Rose Strang 2026

 

 

Forest of Fairhill

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Above. Birch Trees and Willow Shelter. Mixed media on 14×14″ wood. Rose Strang 2026.

This painting is inspired by the birch forests of Pishwanton at Fairhill, which is situated next to a gushing stream and a hill where witches used to gather. In old Scots ‘pish’ means a fast flowing stream and ‘wanton’ means abundant. So there you are, that explains the strange place name!

Pishwanton is owned by the Life Science Trust and everything there is created, grown or built according to Steiner principles about harmony and conservation. Just being there feels more gentle, not in a precious sort of way – just the way that nothing jars, visually or to the nose.

I’ve visited a lot over the years, and now I’m creating a little series of paintings inspired by the arrival of spring in Pishwanton. I feel we could all do with the harmony of Pishwanton just now. Here are a couple of details from the painting ..

Tonight I’m off to see an exhibition in Edinburgh of drawings by Matthew Collings, he did a wonderful series of documentaries in the 1990s about art. He creates paintings with his wife Emma Briggs, and he also draws, very prolifically. I bought one of his sketches a couple of years ago. It’s a self portrait of Matthew Collings drawing a sketch of the artist Frank Auerbach after Auerbach died.  Although Collings says the drawings are instinctive, to me it speaks of mortality. I don’t know if it was intentional, but in the sketch Collings looks semi transparent, as if if disappearing from existence. I find it both moving and uplifting, and I love the colours. I took quite a while choosing the frame with Jamie from Edinburgh’s Detail Framing and I think it looks wonderful floating above the shipwreck n my bookcase, along from a sea triptych I painted a year or so ago.

The subject matter Collings chooses is simply what he experiences each day; memories or current situations and experiences. For the past year of so the best part of his drawings have been about the war on Gaza, tso he work is often harrowing, capturing the brutality visited upon innocent civilians by our world leaders. I’ll post more about the exhibition tomorrow.