FACING THE SEA
When we face the sea, we simultaneously face ourselves because there is nowhere else to run. For two years day and night I painted outside driven by a feverish energy to internalise the landscape of Shetland. I painted outside in gales, in snow, in rain and in hail but very rarely on days of sunny flat calms.
Sometimes these paintings seemed to paint themselves as the brush pushed along by the intensity of the Shetland weather as the paint gets blasted by sand, salt, snow, rain and hail These paintings helped Shetland get deep into my soul as I started to tune into the land sea and sky though paint and charcoal. I only stopped this intense period when I was struck with pleurisy one very cold winter afternoon when I was painting on the sands at St Ninians Isle whilst being lashed by a winter’s gale.