I am often asked, “Do you ever feel you are running out of inspiration?”
The simple answer is, “No”. I love painting – it’s more a question of which ideas I follow up.
I have a deep love of landscape in all its moods so ideas for paintings come into my head all the time – often arising from journeys in unfamiliar places where I see things from a fresh perspective. At other times an unusual combination of weather and light reveals familiar places anew. If I feel especially strongly about an idea I will sketch it out and write words all over it to highlight the things that excited me. Then I might sit and mull it over, pick up pencil or charcoal, and sketch it out again, re-composing it to make it work as strongly as I can.
I sell my Scottish paintings at MacGregor Fine Art in Glasgow and they had asked if I had any ideas for a snowbound landscape in the highlands as a follow-up to a painting “Along the West Highland Way” from the year before.
I enjoy painting the season as it unfolds around me, stimulated often by its particular quality of the light.
Some time ago I was walking with friends in Scotland. We got off the train from Glasgow to Fort William to the north of Rannoch Moor at Corrour Halt. It has a platform, and that’s it. No buildings, no roads – just beautiful mountains and moor, away from it all. For a while we headed along the railway line towards Loch Trieg and then turned west to follow the river to Staoineag bothy, an old shepherd’s hut where we slept the night around a log fire. There was a view westwards toward the range of peaks around Ben Nevis. It was late October and there was already snow on the mountains.
After my conversation with the gallery it was in my mind to paint this as if snow had fallen across the whole glen. With a great deal of artistic licence I sketched a landscape with blackface sheep coming down off the fell along a logging track. A sturdy old oak was silhouetted against the backdrop of snow and the profile of the hills and mountains beyond. I imagined it late on a winter evening. Most of the snow-covered valley was now in cool indigo shade but the last golden rays of the setting sun were coming over the hill lingering across the logging track and the sheep coming to seek shelter on lower ground.
Using the sketch I then painted an impressionist study on board to test out the colours, the balance of the composition, the movement of the sheep, and the general light. This whole process took about a week, in which my imagination lived in that Scottish glen much of the time.
When I was happy with the study I stretched my canvas for the final painting and looked forward to making the atmosphere of that imaginary place come alive on the canvas over the next three weeks.
This was it –
[ Image of “Looking west towards the peaks of the Nevis range – blackface sheep coming off the high ground after a fall of snow.” [ 42” X 30” (105cm X 75cm)]