Storm bound on a small Scottish island

Permission granted

I live on a small Scottish island and a storm has arrived that is going to worsen before it gets better. I also run my own wee Etsy shop and the two are not always compatible! But this is home and I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. The storms might send me indoors but I spend most of the time glancing up to look out of the window as the storm surrounds the house reminding me how powerful nature can be. Storms leave a lasting impression on me for days after they have left our small shores. The daily walk on the beach takes a different focus as the wee pieces of pottery and seaglass are washed up ready for collecting. The bird life is twitchy as if not trusting that the storm has left and I feel the need to look out for them more than usual. Everything feels cleansed and purified and I feel a real positive energy once the storm has left.

Driving me inside allows for more time in the studio once I have messaged my understanding customers to apologise for delays. Some islanders go into melt down when supplies don’t arrive on time for the Co-op shelves but I don’t go down that line. I have lived here for many years and never been left hungry, point made I would say. If I am honest I like a period of being cut off from the mainland because that, for me, is island living. The mainland is not far away and emergencies are connected by the trusty helicopter that lands in the field below my garden and the dog goes wild. So we just get on with it.

Creatively, we are in winter so I am in incubation and doing my best thinking of the year. I am working on a contemporary art quilt with my patrons and just about to start my second artist book for an exhibition at the Barony Centre in the spring. The focus of these two books is my creative roots and while Arran plays a central role so does Kintyre as that is where I go to unwind from daily life.

The message from the Kintyre book was ‘Wild Horses Weep’ and it transports us through a process where we might see the world from the viewpoint of wild horses and their beautiful eyes. On Kintyre they would see a deep connection with the natural world as land meets sea. There is a wildness about Kintyre that is not always evident on my wee island as it somehow attempts to keep up with mainland living standards. I don’t understand that. People don’t come to live here for the mainland to follow them, or at least I don’t think they should. Kintyre is not an island but it is more remote than Arran, the island I call home.

With my Arran Artist Book I am focusing on the wild that you discover when you walk away from communities and up onto the moorlands. Heather moorland has been my signature collection for as long as I have been creating art on Arran so it is the only choice for this new book. Where the Kintyre book was found poetry and stitched paintings the Arran book will be collage based. The perfect thing to be doing on a series of stormy days. It also sits quite well with my contemporary art quilt project which is based on moor at Culloden and the colonising birch trees that helped this land finds its natural heart after the worst of battles on UK soil. So, there is some contemplation to be done and I always recommend winter for that sort of work. Somehow winter gives us permission to slow down and take our time. So, as the storm rages you will find me in my studio cutting, tearing, sticking and stitching with more than the occasional glance out of the window.