I have painted four new canvases of the Outer Hebrides – of crofts and old farms, and of the livestock in meadows filled with mid-summer flowers.
They are landscapes of North Uist and South Uist whose western coasts are the low, flat machair, the fertile width of land which is formed from millennia of accumulated seashell debris blown in on the waves which pound the Atlantic shoreline. As we move inland the machair meets the granite substrate. The granite first appears as boulders which begin to show through the soil. This gives way to low hills until we reach the steeper slopes of the more mountainous eastern spine of the Uists. These high hills then fall away into the sea more precipitously on the eastern coasts.
The farms, crofts and field walls are built of granite from the ground below. The meadows are spangled with summer colour, carrying the same swathes of flowers as in ancient times – flowers that are now lost from much of the mainland scene as the old haymeadows here have largely disappeared.
Swept by salt winds, it’s a landscape of small lochs, of lush growth in the wet fields, but with such trees as there are being stunted and cut by the westerly gales.
I have painted the canvases picturing these Hebridean islands at their most beautiful time of year. The original paintings are now at MacGregor Fine Art, Hope Street, Glasgow, and they are all available as limited edition prints from this website, Gerry Hillman Fine Art, Cornwall.
During my stay I slept in my van and took my bike. It was midsummer so daylight was long and the nights short.
The Uists are now connected with a causeway road so one can travel the length of the islands from North Uist down through Benbecula to South Uist and on to Eriskay at the southernmost tip. Much of the charm of the landscape comes from the sense that it is a step back in time to a simpler, calmer time of rural existence.
Now available to purchase on my website