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North East Open Studios

5/9/2016

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It's that time of year again.  Artists and makers will be opening their studios, garages, front rooms, shops, galleries and other miscellaneous spaces this weekend, to show the public what they do.  

It's my 6th year taking part - once again I am in The Cabin in my back garden. This year I'm number 227 in the directory.  There may well be baking.  I have been tidying and sorting through my work from the past year, deciding what to put on show.   The Cabin is quite small, as those of you who have visited before will know - I am contemplating having an outside exhibition space, weather permitting (and if I can find where I put the little gazebo...), in order to show a wider range of my work.

There are more artists than ever included in the trail I'm part of - this year called The Lower Deeside Trail (see image below).  I have also posted this on my Facebook page, and paper copies will be available at any of the entries listed on it.   Time to get planning where to go - I have started making my list already!  

I look forward to seeing you and welcoming you to The Cabin!
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Mellon Udrigle

31/8/2016

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Delighted to say that this painting, "Letterbox at Mellon Udrigle" is off to a new home after the local art exhibition which I took part in last weekend.  Apparently the buyer (I did not meet her) had been to Mellon Udrigle, so there was a link.   It's one of my favourite beaches on the west coast - take a turn off the main road at Laide, north of Gairloch, Poolewe and Aultbea, but south of Gruinard, and out along a single track road past a string of houses, over the little bridge across the burn and then up over the hill and back down to the coast again.  Watch out for seals along the coastline.  And seabirds - gannets diving perhaps.  It was on Mellon Udrigle beach a while ago, on an overcast day, that I glimpsed a movement to my left, as I stood taking photographs of the sea.  At first I thought it was a dog, but then I noticed the way the animal moved. A sort of lolloping, ungainly gait.  It was an otter, headed from the dunes down to the water.  They are built for swimming, of course, not running. I was not quick enough with my camera, choosing to enjoy the moment, instead. 

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Mellon Udrigle beach, photos taken early April, 2016.
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West coast wanderings

21/8/2016

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Two whole weeks away on the west coast.  Wonderful. The weather was "mixed" - the polite Scottish way of saying that there was no blazing sunshine or sunbathing on the beautiful beaches.  No, it was more a case of rushing out for a walk between the showers, watching the sky for a darkening, making the most of the patches of blue.  The wind kept the midges away; no-one got sunburnt, we had a lovely time.   This time the time away included an adventure involving crossing the Minch (it would be fun to play the tune on the ferry) to the island of Lewis to visit my daughter, who is there for the summer.  

We were treated to a family fishing trip and caught lots of lively, silvery blue/green mackerel and even some haddock.  It took me back to fishing with a handline in Lochcarron as a child - the thrill of feeling that bite on your line, the guessing (to start with) what would be on it, and learning the feel of the way the fish moved.  Maybe it was no coincidence that I went on to spend many years doing mackerel research work.   This time we used sea rods - good sturdy, simple contraptions. No casting involved, which makes very good sense in a small boat with four rods deployed. Unlock the reel, finger over the line, let it out till it hits the bottom, reel it in a bit, then jiggle up and down (gently), and wait.  Of course the folk who took us out knew exactly where to go, which helped!

Lewis. What a place - vast expanses of sky and moor and beaches that stretch as far as the eye can see.   Oodles of abandoned houses and sheds, many with half their roofs torn off.  Rusting corrugated iron galore. Since I was with family, there was less time to take photographs; some day soon I hope to go back.  We made a visit to Luskentyre beach on Harris (I still haven't worked out exactly how the division between Harris and Lewis works, but we did pass signs indicating the end of one and the start of the other).   The sun came out and the sea was that magical turquoise that comes from sea over sand.  A fortuitously washed up log on the beach made a perfect place to perch and sketch.  The family were thoughtful enough to leave me to it.  I only moved when I realised the tide was about to reach my feet.  Bliss.  One day I will capture that colour. One day.

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Fame at last

16/6/2016

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Do you recognise this painting? Yes. it's one of mine! The Green Boat, gracing the cover of The Leopard magazine.  
A wee while ago, a lovely lady called Annie Woolridge contacted me, asking if I would be happy to be interviewed for an article she was writing on artists based in northeast Scotland.  There was to be a series of articles.  I happily said yes.  Annie came to The Cabin one morning a couple of months ago. We drank coffee and chatted; she admired my paintings hung around the walls.  I had tidied the studio a bit.  At some point she turned on a very unobtrusive recording machine.  It was all very relaxed and pleasant; I felt as if we had known each other a while.  
​I partly forgot about the process. then realised last week that the article might be in the current edition of the magazine.  I popped into our local Co-op (I knew they stocked it) and lo and behold, there was my painting on the front cover!    Above it on the magazine stand was the Scottish Field, with Alexander McCall Smith's name writ large upon it.  I was thrilled to be in such excellent company, even in print!  In fact I was so excited (not a very accustomed state for me, as those who know me well will confirm), I mentioned to the poor young lad at the checkout that it was my painting on the cover of the magazine, when I purchased a copy.  He smiled politely.  

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Happy New Year

5/1/2016

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Happy New Year. I hope that 2016 brings you peace, health and happiness.  I was fortunate to spend both Christmas and New Year on the west coast of Scotland with my nearest and dearest this festive season.  The weather was mixed, as is to be expected at this time of year.  The days seem to take turns; a day of solid rain and howling winds would be followed by mild, balmy air breezing in from the south.  We know from long years of experience to head out as soon as it is fair.  Fair mainly means not raining.  So, we had some good walks on the glorious beaches; Big Sand, Gairloch Beach and Red Point on Boxing Day.  The latter was a very windy day and we were sand-blasted as soon as we reached the beach.  I love to stand and watch the waves crashing on the shore. The way they roll and break, the foamy whiteness moving along the crest as they approach.  It was too cold to stand for long, however. Only long enough to take a few photographs.
​We retreated to the south end of the bay and found shelter below the turf line where the sheep had formed hollows to lie in. We perched on the rounded sandstone rocks and drank tea, ate goose sandwiches (we had the good fortune to eat goose on Christmas day) and slabs of Christmas cake with marzipan and sweet, sweet icing. It was a good day.  I hope to have more like it in the coming year.
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North East Open Studios

11/9/2015

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Once again, the year has flown by and it's time again for North East Open Studios, when artists and makers across northeast Scotland open their doors to the public.  There will be potters, glassmakers, jewellers, painters, photographers, weavers, embroiderers and woodworkers, to name but a few.  There will be exhibitions in village halls, garages, living rooms and sheds, studios and workshops.  

This will be my fifth year taking part.  As usual, I am not as organised as I would like to be.  I will be collecting some last minute orders of greetings cards later on this afternoon.  And stocking up on real coffee and raspberries for making muffins in the morning.   I have not finished hanging my work.  The Cabin is clean and tidy, however, so that is a good start.  I'm looking forward to meeting new folk, welcoming back friends and people who have visited before.  

To help people plan a day out visiting venues which are close together, I am delighted to be part of the North Deeside Road Trail - 13 artists within 15 minutes drive of each other.  I'm venue number 214 this year.  I look forward to seeing you in the next ten days!  Open daily 10am - 5pm, except Tuesday and Thursday (closed). Open late till 8pm on Friday 18th September.  

Here's the map - you can click on it to download a copy.  
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West coast - memories old and new

3/8/2015

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Bealach na Ba
It was time for a break.  A week off on the west coast. We looked at the weather forecast, but didn't pay much attention to it.  We had decided to go, whatever the weather.  The trick is just to get out in it.  If it's fine in the morning, don't delay a walk on the beach until the afternoon.  It could well be raining by then.  It could be raining in an hour, or in half an hour.  That's the beauty of the west coast, in many ways.  The constantly changing light, the endless shades of the sea and sky and how they sometimes seem to merge into one.  Skye disappears behind thick banks of raincloud, only to reappear with bright shafts of sunlight illuminating its eastern slopes and shores.  

One day we had a wonderful trip to Applecross.  The day started grey and damp, but we headed there, undaunted, stopping at Torridon on the way.  The General Stores there have lovely home baking and good coffee, so a stop there was a must.   The Gallery is worth a visit too - it's in the community centre there and has a wide range of work by local artists (including yours truly).  I dropped off some cards there too. Delighted to have another outlet.

Applecross was looking picture-postcard perfect.  Blue sky, blue sea and throngs of holidaymakers enjoying what the Inn had to offer.  We availed ourselves of the food and drink and very good it was too.   The return journey was made via the Bealach na Ba (pass of the cattle), which I was more familiar with approaching from the other direction.  We spent many family holidays in Lochcarron, including New Year and Easter.  If the weather was cold enough, we would make the trip to the top of the Bealach and skate on one of the little lochans there.  After my father had tested the ice, of course.  A hard frost for 3 nights or so was all that was required - and no snow to spoil the ice, of course!

The view down to Kishorn from the Bealach brought back memories too. There was no sandy beach in Lochcarron, so in the summer if the weather was fine and warm, we would drive over the hill to swim at the sandy beach at Kishorn. One memorable summer, the mackerel came in to the shore, after sprats, which they drove boiling to the surface.  I have vague recollections of my brother and father running along the shore with buckets, scooping fish out of the water.  Or maybe that was the story that was told.  Somewhere, there is a set of family diaries which were kept during those holidays.   This year, history moved on and it was my son who brought back a great catch of mackerel from a successful fishing trip.  
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Christmas Fairs

24/11/2014

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 I signed up for a couple of Christmas Fairs this year.  Last weekend I was at the Aboyne Playgroup Fayre in the Victory Hall in Aboyne.  I am pretty much a novice at setting up a table, but tried not to let it show too much.  I have a list, which helps.  It means I don't forget vital things like table cloths, sticky labels and pens and a flask of coffee.  Actually, there was free tea and coffee for the stall-holders at this event, which was great.  I managed to make not too bad a fist of setting out my stall, in the end (you can judge for yourself - photo above).

I'd been assigned a table at the top of the hall, next to the face-painting.  It was fun to watch a series of children be transformed into dogs, butterflies and (a sign of the times) angry birds. More fascinating, for the people-watcher that I am, was to see the personalities of these small beings, already well developed.  The confident ones strode up to the chair, sat patiently while the art was applied to their little visogs and then picked up the mirror to admire the results.  The shyer ones had a small motif drawn on their arm or hand.  And the shyest didn't want their faces painted at all.  Or perhaps it's not shyness; perhaps it's just the difference between extroverts and introverts.  The sparkly blue butterflies went out into the world (or hall, village, Deeside) saying "look at me, I am pretty!", whereas the unpainted ones did not wish to draw attention to themselves.  Perhaps they feel beautiful enough as they are. 

Santa's grotto was behind me on the stage, so I did not get a chance to observe the small people there.  But I could see the steps leading up there.  Again, it was fascinating to see what went on.  The small people who dragged mummy or daddy up the steps, desperate to tell Santa their wishes.  The mummys and daddys trying to persuade their offspring to to go and visit the man in the red suit with his long white beard and big black boots.  Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. I'm sure there were a few tears in that grotto.  But hopefully more smiles than tears.

This Sunday I will be at Redwood Winter Fair in Echt Village Hall from 10am - 5pm.  (The Fair is on both Saturday and Sunday, but I will just be there the one day).   There will be face-painting, I believe.  Hope to see you there!

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A narrow escape

15/8/2014

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I should have known better.  All the signs were there.  The lashing rain and howling wind which had beaten at my bedroom window all night.  The fact that I had to wait for a semi-dry five minutes in which to load my luggage into the car.  A small rucksack was blown across the ground and into a puddle.  And then there were the fire crews pumping water out of the burn next to the butcher's shop, which is opposite the newsagents, in an attempt to stop the burn bursting its banks.  The newsagent and the butcher were standing watch over some sandbags at the door to the latter's shop.  Another fire crew (all volunteers) was pumping water off a the car park between the Chinese takeaway, the community centre and the local supermarket.

The burn in the left hand picture above had been just a little trickle the day before.  Now it was a swollen, raging brown torrent.  I was glad that the new bridge was still intact.  Luckily it has been built quite high above the stream bed.  The sea was frothing and churning; the first half-mile or so of it brown with peat and silt and detritus carried into it by streams and rivers.  Such a contrast to the blue seas and skies of the previous days.

I discovered that the road north was blocked by a landslide, so decided to take the road south.  Glad that I had checked the road conditions before setting off, I was only a couple of miles on the road when I encountered a pickup reversing along the road ahead of me (in the same direction as I was going).  I followed it; not the most sensible move, as it turned out.  It reversed to a point beyond the pickup in the right hand photograph above.  In the middle of the road was a black minibus.  Stuck. In floodwater.  Attempts were made to tow it out.  It seemed that there was difficulty attaching a tow rope.  I waited patiently, in what appeared to be shallow water, neatly in at the side of the road.  I put on my hazard warning lights and watched with slight concern as vehicles started to pull up behind me.  A police car appeared.   Attempts to tow the minibus were aborted. Four men pushed it along the road past my car and out of the water.  I was probably about a hundred yards from where the water on the road started.  

I took a mental note of where the water level was under the pickup parked in front of me. When I first drew up behind it, the water was about half way across, under the chassis.  It was rising.  Not that fast, but it was rising. Inexorably. And the water I could see out of my driver's window was flowing. Flowing and quite deep.  Six inches, perhaps. It did not seem sensible to try to turn.  The other side of the road had effectively become part of the river, which had burst its banks.  I asked the policeman, as he passed in his luminous yellow/green suit, if he intended to close the road. "As a last resort" was his reply. And he told me to stay put.  He started letting lorries and four wheel drive vehicles pass along the road, in the opposite direction from the way I was facing. By now the cheery chap in the pickup in the photo had headed safely through to the other side.  From where I was, I couldn't see round the corner, to where a queue of traffic was building up.  The Westerbus came through, a couple of Landrovers, a big lorry which went too fast and caused a great wake to slosh alarmingly at the underbelly of my wee car.  It was when that happened that I realised I needed to get out of the situation as soon as I could.  I could see how easily a car could end up in water that was too deep for it, and get washed away, or at least become impossible to control.   

A fire crew arrived and guided me, reversing, to a place where the water was not too deep and I could turn. 
I headed back to the village and waited to hear if the road reopened.  It did not; not that day or the next.  I took the road north, later on.  It was passable with great care, after the landslide had been cleared.

But the whole episode made me think. Quite hard.  We make choices all the time, every day. And those choices affect what happens.  If I had set out an hour earlier, the minibus might not have been stuck, the water level would almost certainly have been lower, and I might have got through.  If I had set out half an hour later, I would have seen the tailback and not been the first car in the line.  If I had not followed the pickup into the water, I wouldn't have had a rather worrying hour's wait.  If I had taken a stranger's advice and turned my engine off while waiting, would my engine have re-started or would I have had to be rescued?  If I had listened to friend's advice, I would not have set out at all, and would not have had this tale to tell.  

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Exhibition time

9/8/2014

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Boat at Badachro
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Installation at Inverewe Garden. A little triangular wooden shelter with tiny round windows featuring photos of places travelled to, of ten with his daughter, Mairi Sawyer, by Osgood Mackenzie, founder of the garden.
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The view over Gairloch bay towards the Torridon hills, seen every morning this week on my way to "work".
It's nearly the end of my week's exhibition at the GALE centre in Gairloch.  People have come and gone.  They visit the centre for different reasons.  Some come in search of accommodation - the staff are unfailingly patient and helpful, even when requests are made quite abruptly.  I guess it must be stressful to arrive in an area without any accommodation booked and not know where you will be staying that night.  Stressful, unsettling, unnerving.  And they are supposed to be on holiday.  The headline in the local newspaper yesterday was about the lack of accommodation and long queues for ferries out to the islands.  I hope this alarmist attitude doesn't put visitors off.  There are often still beds available in Bed and Breakfast places which do not advertise on websites, or through official organisations.  I have not heard of any tourists sleeping rough in ditches anywhere.  The campsites are busy too, with tents, caravans and campervans.  

Others come in to obtain information about what to do in the area.  Or for directions to the campsites or the harbour or to the nearest cash machine.  Or where to get fish and chips.  

I've chatted to many of the visitors here this week - from those who return year after year to the area, either simply because they love it, and/or because they have family or family connections, to those who have never been here before.  Everyone is positive about their experience.  Even on a grey drizzly day, there are comments on the beauty of the scenery and the wildness of the landscape.  On a beautiful sunny day, such as today, there are fewer people in to browse the gifts and crafts and souvenirs, or to sample the lovely homemade cakes.  They are all out busy enjoying the sunshine, either on a boat trip, or on one of the many unspoilt beaches, or perhaps up a mountain somewhere nearby. And that's as it should be; that's why we come here ourselves, after all.
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