After a few years of waiting and hoping that the Firestation Creative project in Dunfermline would become more than just a great idea, it has finally opened its studio doors to artists. I was first to get in and start working last Tuesday and it was well worth the wait! It’s a fantastic looking place and when the cafe and gallery are fully open to the public, which should be in the next couple of weeks, it will be a truly wonderful artistic hub for the town.
So here’s what’s currently on the go in my new studio. Two large oil paintings, one of Jeffery Street with Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh and another of my Awaiting The Turn of The Tide series, based on my travels around the Scottish coast.
Mull of Galloway, Scotland’s southernmost lighthouse
Last week I spent a fantastic 4 days travelling down to The Mull of Galloway via every lighthouse I could find en route. The sun was blazing and the sunsets were magnificent all the way! I also visited the towns of Girvan, Turnberry and lovely Portpatrick, and had a wander round Culzean Castle too.
In a snug wee Portpatrick pub last Friday evening, I had the very good fortune to find myself sitting next to a chap called Rab and his wife Kate. Rab just so happens to be the son of a lighthouse keeper, so we spent the whole evening getting acquainted over beer and whiskey and chatting about the various lighthouses he’d grown up in, including Corsewall Head which I’d spent that very afternoon visiting; as well as Tod Head and Kinnaird Head which I’d been at only the week before. His father also spent 5 years 12 miles out in the North Sea off Arbroath on one of the most famous and notorious reefs on the planet (and my own home lighthouse) The Bell Rock. It turned out to be one of those very serendipitous evenings. Rab now runs an engineering company that is contracted by the Northern Lighthouse Board to maintain some of Scotland’s more remote lighthouses, and he kindly offered me the chance some day to go along with him for the ride on one of his jobs. I will have to earn my keep though, maybe even getting a chance to fling some paint at a ‘real’ lighthouse instead of just at a painting of one!
So here are a few of the best photos from the many hundreds I took. It’s not all about lighthouses though. I got some shots of boats, harbours and birds too.
I will be attempting to translate some of these and the many others I’ve been taking into artworks for an exhibition at the end of this year. But, unfortunately, I won’t be doing any of that this week since I sprained my painting hand whilst attempting to show my daughter how not to use her new skateboard!
So today I’ll be heading north again to get my campervan’s gearbox fixed in Stonehaven. I might even have time to visit Scurdie Ness lighthouse near Ferryden, which just so happens to be up for sale (if you happen to have a spare £360K in your back pocket and always dreamed of owning your own lighthouse!).
Sunset, Ailsa CraigTurnberry Lighthouse and The Isle of ArranPortpatrick Harbour at DuskThe Sun Sets beyond Killintringan Lighthouse and Northern Ireland
Corsewall Head LighthouseThis beach ain’t big enough for the both of us!Dazzling Cormorant
Here’s a map of all the Scottish lighthouses that I found at Ardnamurchan Point. There’s a lot of them! Almost 100 and pretty much all built by the Stevenson family within 100 years from the first (the Bell Rock) which was finished in 1810. I hope to get to as many as possible over the next few months as part of my project, The Lights That Never Go Out, An Artistic Odyssey From Muckle Flugga To The Mull of Galloway.
So after a day spent washing clothes and repacking the campervan after the Easter trip to the west coast, I’m off again to spend the next few days and nights sketching and photographing the lighthouses between Montrose and Fraserburgh. Tonight I’m hoping for a clear and starry sky (ie. no fog horn!) spent at the foot of Rattray Head.
Come along and see some amazing prints from our very diverse cooperative of artists working across a huge range of printing methods and styles. You are welcome to join us at the preview this Friday evening, 6-8pm (details below). Hope to see you there!
I’ve been working on a smaller scale these past few weeks, partly as a way into painting again after a long period of etching in monotone and also for an exhibition of small works at Morningside Gallery in Edinburgh. I’ve really loved working in watercolours again, which is how I started way back when.
Here’s the latest little picture I’ve just finished of Jeffrey Street from North Bridge, Edinburgh, which will be winging it’s way through to Edinburgh later this afternoon. This one has ended up in Marchmont Gallery along with a few other pieces. I went in on spec this afternoon and the manager, Karen, wouldn’t let me leave with it! Delighted to be represnted by another lovely gallery in Edinburgh!
I wish it wasn’t just my paintings and prints that will be attending tonight’s wonderful looking banquet at the Abbot House. They’ll be adorning these fine medieval walls for the coming weeks, so drop by and have a gander if you’re in the vicinity. All are for sale just in case you’re still on the hunt for something with a very personal touch and created by my own not-so-fair hands!
I’ve decided to throw open my medieval studio door again this weekend, but it’ll be on Sunday instead of Saturday. Hopefully that means a few more folk who couldn’t make it last time can do so this time round. So please come along between 11am and 4pm for a final chance to pick up a great bargain limited edition etching or painting before Christmas!!
Yesterday’s open studio day turned out to be fantastic in many ways. I met some lovely new people who made the extra effort to climb all those stairs to my studio and, thankfully, their thoughts and impressions of my work were very positive – always good to hear! It was also great to catch up with a few old friends too.
As well as being an opportunity to sell and show my work to new clients, the viewing also provided me with a chance to see a lot of the work I’ve been doing over the last couple of years framed and hung together as a collection, instead of being shipped off to various galleries, where there is often little opportunity to see that or to get a feel for how it’s all going or any feedback from clients. That was very useful, as sometimes it’s difficult for me to see the cohesion that exists between the individual pieces I’m working on at any given time. This is particularly the case with the etchings, as it can take a pretty long time to complete the whole process of making them and I usually like to work on just the one or two at a time. I think it all worked well together as a whole though, and seeing it all together gave me a few ideas for new pieces to add to my series of etchings and paintings.
I enjoyed the whole experience so much I will be doing it all again this coming Sunday. So if you couldn’t make it this time, please come along between 11-4pm at the Abbot House!
So after a very long but productive week and a successful day yesterday, I decided to crack open the gluhwein and sample the Christmas festivities on offer at Edinburgh’s Winter Wonderland. I feel very lucky to have what I think is probably the most beautiful city in the world – especially at Christmas – right on my doorstep. And what artist could fail to be inspired by scenes such is this!
Here’s a couple of new prints I’ve just finished. Dunnotter Castle in particular is quite different from what I’ve been doing for the past couple of years, but I have loved the painterly method and the scratchy effects you get from using sugarlift, which is how I did this plate. Picasso invented this style of etching where you paint or use a fine nibbed pen to draw a suger solution onto the metal, then once it’s dry you cover the whole plate with straw hat varnish before pouring hot water over it. The water and the heat makes the sugar solution expand and burst through the varnish in the areas you painted, exposing the bare plate. The varnish elswhere on the plate protects it from the acid. You then clean the plate and add an aquatint (a fine spray of acrylic or resin-based dots which acts like a protective mesh screen) to it and begin the process of exposing it to the acid for the various tints. The tiny dots of aquatint again protect the metal beneath them allowing the acid to only etch the spaces in between, thus creating tone. I usually bathe the plate in 30 second dips for each tone, but it depends on the metal and the acid being used. It can be a wonderfully expressive technique and I’ve used it a few times now.
Edinburgh from Inverleith Park below is another sugarlift etching. I’m looking forward to experimenting with it some more in the coming months.
