This is a very big painting featuring blue, green and purple colours
Size really does matter, particularly when you’re trying to capture the beauty of a huge landscape.
From rolling forests to wild running waters this abstract is an homage to the Scottish Highlands.
The bigger the canvas the bigger the challenge. Much of that is down to being able to reach into the centre of it (especially difficult for me as I paint onto flat canvas on the floor). However, I am pleased to say that thanks to a hoist (don’t ask) I can now happily dangle above my work all day long.
So this is how I manged to get all those tiny and carefully constructed details into the very heart of the painting and how I was able to create the shapes that emanate from the middle. It was necessary to grow the patterns organically in order to keep with the theme of creating an abstraction of the things I love about the highlands of Scotland.
Ferns, heathers, trees, rocks, valleys, Lochs and the weather systems – you could go on for a lifetime with this kind of interpretation. Whether you see things in the small details or think of it as an overall entity is up to you; we will all see something different in it.
What I can say is how pleased I am with it, how brave it is (as a painting on its own merit) and how its forms and colours will always offer up something new to look at.
Sure you’d need an enormous blank wall to hang it and yes, it’s probably not going to match your soft furnishings but sometimes you just gotta forget that stuff and let the raw, ragged nature of it grab your senses. Rather like the highlands themselves then…
