Fertile Island 1
1998
Egg Tempera on Gesso Board
36 x 30 “
ENQUIRE
The fertile islands on the lochs of Shetland are unique botanical havens, special and rare places guarded by the water making them sanctuaries for wildflowers, rare plants and on a few of them the original Shetland relict trees still grow. They are also highly symbolic in my paintings the notion of a sacred place or sanctuary that is untainted by the modern world.
My fishing trips were taking me ever deeper into the landscape of Shetland and it is on these trips that I discovered places that I can only describe as energetically charged. Usually, these places showed evidence of the peoples who once lived in Shetland and who too presumably recognised these places as sacred. Natural features come together in these places whether it is in the formations of the rocks, the presence of water or the alignment of the sun and moon , there is a sense of mystery and power in some places that can be hard to put into words. Some of the lochs of Shetland hold Fertile Islands some of which have the energy of a sacred place.
These islands are rarely visited by humans because of their inaccessibility, but most importantly they are not visited by sheep, and as such are ecological strongholds holds in a landscape that has been over grazed for centuries. These precious environments are inspirational places of learning pointing to what the land around could become once again if it was managed differently. The Shetland botanist Walter Scott swam out to most of these islands to document the plants, noting the different vegetation to the surrounding land of the lochs. My fertile island paintings were created against this backdrop of what could be described as a near monoculture where they have become sanctuaries protected from the forces around where the tree of life is still allowed to grow.
My fishing trips were taking me ever deeper into the landscape of Shetland and it is on these trips that I discovered places that I can only describe as energetically charged. Usually, these places showed evidence of the peoples who once lived in Shetland and who too presumably recognised these places as sacred. Natural features come together in these places whether it is in the formations of the rocks, the presence of water or the alignment of the sun and moon , there is a sense of mystery and power in some places that can be hard to put into words. Some of the lochs of Shetland hold Fertile Islands some of which have the energy of a sacred place.
These islands are rarely visited by humans because of their inaccessibility, but most importantly they are not visited by sheep, and as such are ecological strongholds holds in a landscape that has been over grazed for centuries. These precious environments are inspirational places of learning pointing to what the land around could become once again if it was managed differently. The Shetland botanist Walter Scott swam out to most of these islands to document the plants, noting the different vegetation to the surrounding land of the lochs. My fertile island paintings were created against this backdrop of what could be described as a near monoculture where they have become sanctuaries protected from the forces around where the tree of life is still allowed to grow.