Acrylic on canvas, 2022, 15 x 15 cm

this little painting consists of lemon yellow brush marks over scraped paint of various blues and whites, like asemic writing, as if the Firth had used its mark-making ability on sand and water to write the river a love letter.

Acrylic on canvas, 2022, 15 x 15 cm

This is one of the small and very small canvases I have in my studio which act as idea boards and the recipients of spare paint, until they suddenly become finished in their own right. Usually there are a lot of layers on them. The gold paint on this one reflects light, stands in for light in sky and on water, and sandbank shape. I love gold and other metallic paint for this reflective quality. There is also a quiet connection to religious icons.

Acrylic on canvas, 2022, 40 x 40 cm. SOLD

A small painting, working over old paint, from my recent beach drawings.  Part of a new series about the tidal river mouth of the Eden, its sandbanks, its divided streams, sea eagles, seals, old fishing posts – all that and the cathedral sky in St Andrews Bay.

Acrylic and linen on canvas, 2022, 13.5 x 30 cm. I like these little box canvases, the painting goes around to each side, so there are five surfaces, and the A4 size is quite a different experience.

Let’s go to that land is incised into the wet paint with the point of my palette knife.

Acrylic on panel, 40.5 x 40.5 cm, 2022.

The paint-over painted over – all that gold gleaming. Many layers here. The field of the yellow-haired boy, Achtiltibuie, a place not in Assynt but in neighbouring Coigach, the name derived from Achd Ille Buidhe, or I have found Achadh a’ ghille bhuidhe.

Acrylic on canvas, 20 x 20 cm, 2022

The other of two small ones (acrylic on canvas, 20 x 20 cm) done in one go on the table after messing up on various others. Often the practice makes perfect works!  Assynt hill painting, Allt na Bradhan, meaning ‘burn of the quern(stone)’ named after one of the streams that run off Sàil Garbh (rough heel in English, heel denoting a long slope which ends a chain of peaks) so clear in that morning light, and Sàil Gorm, the blue one.

Acrylic on canvas, 20 x 20  cm, 2022

this little painting is one of a pair of preparatory sketches. The name Allt na Saobhaidh Mòire is from a stream that runs down between the two towers of Quinag. Saobhaidh Mòire means ‘Large fox-den’. Which is the name given to a large hollow on the hillside on the east side of Sàil Ghorm.

Acrylic on collaged linen, 30 x 30 cm, 2021