Above: Glenshee 2. Oil on wood board. Rose Strang 2026

This is the second painting in the Glenshee series, showing a little more colour and mid-tones in contrast to Glenshee 1

These two are for the Limetree Gallery‘s Autumn Show, which launches 17th September this year.

 

Glenshee is the pass you travel through on your way to Braemar in the Cairngorms. Last year we drove it twice a day while I was showing the Living Mountain series at the Braemar Literary Festival, with nowhere left to stay in Braemar itself. No hardship, given the ever-changing light on the mountains, and a little café by the ski centre for a cheap, good breakfast first thing.

It’s the pass itself that stayed with me though. Glenshee, Gleann Sìth in Scottish Gaelic: the glen of the fairies.

I find patterns of animals in these hills. In this second painting we’re further in, the slopes have turned tawny and warm like an animal pelt, hunching like the flank of some great sleeping creature. The oxblood reds are more obvious, bringing a visceral quality, maybe a sense of the danger of these mountains, post-glacial, when it wasn’t just about getting lost in cold mist, but encountering bears, wolves and lynx

And it seems the old Gaelic namers saw the same thing. In the posts to come I’ll explore why the glen is named for fairies, and the boar that haunts its hills