I spent a week on the island of Noss , where every day I climbed to the top of the hill laden with drawing boards to spend all day every day drawing the gannets which led to a whole series of works inspired by gannets .
This painting is not just a celebration of the rhythmical energy and drama of a gannet colony but also marks the beginnings of my interest in the geology of Shetland and especially the layers of deep time that rock formations expose us to. In an age where human time is measured in seconds, minutes, hours, days, months and years ,deep time is a phrase used to describe the geological layers of time that span billions of years Rock formations challenge almost every creation story in terms of going way back beyond recorded history by revealing ages and epochs that we can only but imagine. Rocks can humble us if we give in to the larger meanings that they expose us to if we can slow down enough to recognise accept their teachings.