Cliff Foot acrylic on board ALAN S.WATSON
THE WEATHER has very much been on our minds since the New Year. Well, when is it not? But this time it has been exceptional. The wind and rain and storms have not been quite of biblical proportions but it has seemed as if the rain would never stop.
Yet, landscape artists dislike bright sunny days and cloudless blue skies. Rather, they are human so they enjoy them as much as anyone else, but not when they are working.
Each season brings challenges but for most Scottish landscape artists, summer is the worst; the flat light of high summer is dull and uninteresting. When the sun is at its height there are no long shadows, no light and shade. The changing seasons and the unpredictability of the weather in Scotland stimulate and inspire artists — winter storms can provide stunning subjects and dramatic paintings.
Loch Scavaig watercolour and ink TOM SHANKS RSW RGI PAI
Landscape Study 6 oil on board KIRSTIE COHEN
Sunshine and Showers watercolour and gouache MOIRA FERRIER RSW
Rhythm of the Waves 3 acrylic on canvas PATRICIA SADLER
Winter storms also inspire poets. In 'Spate in winter midnight', the Scottish poet, Norman MacCaig, brilliantly expresses a winter storm in the Highlands.
Spate in winter midnight
The streams fall down and through the darkness bear
Such wild and shaking hair,
Such looks beyond a cool surmise,
Such lamentable uproar from night skies
As turn the owl from honey of blood and make
Great stags stand still to hear the darkness shake.
Through Troys of bracken and Babel towers of rocks
Shrinks now the looting fox,
Fearful to touch the thudding ground
And flattened to it by the mastering sound.
And roebuck tilt and leap sideways; their skin
Twitches like water on the fear within.
Black hills are slashed white with this falling grace
Whose violence buckles space
To a sheet-iron thunder. This
Is noise made universe, whose still centre is
Where the cold adder sleeps in his small bed,
Curled neatly round his neat and evil head.
