Above. Port Grulainn. Iona. Mixed media on 16×16″ wood. Rose Strang 2026

It never fails. Every time I walk on to the ferry and watch the island approach, it feels like I’m entering a different realm, somewhere magical and sacred.

I’m not alone in that, probably thousands of people visit Iona each year, seeking something meaningful in this island with its deep spiritual history. Maybe the effect is intensified by each successive visit.

It’s not always sweetness and light there, but that’s the nature of real relationships isn’t it? Whatever you have going on, you bring with you to Iona, or Iona presents a challenge, and then nearly always, something shifts into place.

I always feel a rush of excitement anyway. I suppose everyone feels something of that when approaching an island. All the stories you read as a kid too; Stevenson’s Treasure Island,  Enid Blyton’s The Secret Island (yes, she had some dodgy views, but her description of kids going off to an island, unbeknownst to adults, totally captured childhood adventure!)

There’s the Orcadian island ancestry that goes deep into the past on my dad’s maternal and paternal sides. But then, that’s probably the ancestry of half of Scotland! I lived there for a year when I was about 19 and never felt the affinity for Orkney that I do for Iona.

I’ve always imagined I’ll have my ashes scattered there one day. If there’s anyone around when I’m gone to make that happen. I never imagined I’d get married there, but I did! In my mid-fifties, in St Odhrain’s Chapel.

It was perfect. And it felt earned in a way, because there were many times I’d come to Iona alone, to paint, or to attempt escape from life’s struggles and disappointments. I remember the winter there 2018, when I went to Iona as part of an artist’s residency on the north end of the island and felt quite overwhelmed by the intensity of it all, the people staying there and my own history.

Since our wedding in 2023 though, the island seems to welcome us with open arms. We’ve made new friends, most recently with a documentary-maker and his artist partner. It turned out he’d made some of my favourite documentaries of all time! Extreme Pilgrim, for example, or Going Tribal and Around the World in 80 Faiths, to name a few.

I met them in the kitchen on our last day there last year, and when they said they planned to get married on Iona, I felt very touched. We chatted away animatedly, they came over to meet Adam, and I felt we’d made real friends in those minutes before we rushed off to the ferry.

After that we met up a few times, and then, of course, it turned out their visit to Iona this year overlapped with ours. Happy days.

I’m supposed to be blogging about painting here though. After we’d settled in to the campsite, caught up with our friends, celebrated our anniversary, and Adam’s birthday! it was time to start painting.

I usually head towards the north of the island, where the sea is always enchantingly green, but this time we decided to wander around to the west beaches as the sea looked amazing that day. We could see the waves from our tent on Cnoc Oran, but I think it was probably the romantic story of the marriage proposal of our new Iona friends that led us there too.

I’m actually slightly scared, if also entranced, by the sea. It really focusses the mind to be almost standing in the surf as you paint …

More tomorrow…

ascribed to SAINT COLUMBA

 An I Mo Chridhe

 An I mo chridhe, I mo ghràidh
 An àite guth manaich bidh geum bà;
 Ach mun tig an saoghal gu crìch
 Bithidh I mar a bha.

 In Iona of my heart, Iona of my love,
 Instead of monks’ voices shall be lowing of cattle,
 But ere the World come to an end
 Iona shall be as it was.
                         Traditional translation