Travel Bursary to Orkney and The Outer Hebrides

“Looking back on my time on North Uist it is difficult to describe the quality of the air, the views, the colours, the intensity of atmosphere which fascinated me so. It is a bit like having the insides of your eyes washed out, the colours taken away, then  restored with a new brilliance. I felt I could breathe on North Uist. The many lochans pooling in the landscape reflect the immense skies. Herons fly, swans gather.

I wanted to meet an artist who lives and works in this stupendously beautiful, but wild and remote place.
Laura Donkers’ entry in the little book ‘made in the outer Hebrides, a cultural guide’ (  www.visitouterhebrides.co.uk  & www.cne-siar.gove.uk Arts & Culture pages) was very interesting, and probably resonated most strongly with my own practice.

I telephoned her from my tent and we met one windy morning in her warm kitchen. What follows is from my notes…

Laura is from London; she’s lived on North Uist for 30 years. She said it’s tough to be an artist there; one’s practice as an artist implies exhibiting, but opportunities to exhibit on the Islands are very limited. It is tricky to have a contemporary art practice. She did the MFA at Dundee, where she met lots of artists. There are many artists on the Uists, too.
Recently provision for the arts has been decimated, the roles of arts officers have been severely curtailed. She is a member of Mat Roberts Arts (based in London) so she can inform herself about opportunities in the SE.
To find a way to survive as an artist, and to keep her practice alive and thriving, Laura has developed community projects. This is a good way to obtain generous funding. She is currently working on a climate change/challenge project with local organisations, in an environmental project which encourages people to grow (their own?) food.
This project is based on the South Islands, and involves people setting up allotments. There is input from Kew Gardens Grow Wild project, involving an ex-MOD brown field site, where the allotments are built on raised beds.
Being an artist on Uist means embracing interdisciplinary practice; and accepting that not all the needs of one’s life as an artist will be met. It is very expensive to send work away for exhibitions.
A group of artist recently set up a collective on the back of a successful group exhibition – around 12 artists; they are now involved with a group in Germany (Angermunde) and they are engaging in exchanges with this group. Funding for this has come from the local college and wind farm.
There are significant artists in this group, with good track records.
 
On the Islands some people have a perception that knowledge has to come from outside but in fact the knowledge is already here. Laura said” People have to be artisst to live here – continually responding to the climate, the conditions – that requires creativity. 
…The difficulty is that people who are doing/making and organisations who are there representing the community…often the two don’t meet – Artists are the bridge over the divide – a way to come together.
Artist need to be light on their feet – they can’t settle – the environment keeps you sufficiently unsettled.
Local people are very adaptable. Laura’s husband who is a Vet sometimes has to perform a Caesarian section on a cow in a field. His assistant might be a child, who carries the generational knowledge of what to do – they know exactly how to connect with what they’re seeing – and have a calmness, similar to the response of indigenous peoples. This can be how an artist responds too, with experienced knowing which does not come from a book.
Laura is currently doing a practice-led Ph.D (Dundee) about the embodied knowledge of the community in Uist. Interests include the equality of life (humans don’t dominate), and the sense of space, openness engendered by the sheer physical force of the landscape.
……………….

I taught at Newlyn School of Art for the weekend I was due to leave for Scotland. So I was tired as I began the drive north. But I couldn’t wait to leave, to begin my journey. The car was loaded with camping equipment, drawing boards, boxes of paint and food – and my dog with her bed.

First stop north of Bristol, then on to Helmsdale via a night in Dundee and time spent at Dundee Contemporary Arts – a beautiful contemporary space. I saw a poster for an exhibition at the Pier Arts Centre, I felt on course.

Helmsdale was breath-taking.  A tiny little harbour full of colour and brightness; a clear sharp wind, sunshine, and a troop of cormorants drying their wings on the breakwaters, their wings flashing white as they flew over water.

The next day I visited Timespan.

I  met the Curator, Frances  Davis  ([email protected]) and I loved looking around the beautiful space there. The exhibition of significant objects, hand-made tools, was quiet, still and a good preparation for visiting the museum alongside the art gallery. There is a permanent display of photographs, quotes and objects relating to the Clearances. I found it very moving indeed to read the accounts of those people who were forced to leave the places they loved, and which had sustained generations of their families before them.

There were also photographs and descriptions of the longhouses and how they lived from the land: their animals, the land around; the peat cutting.

Driving across Sutherland towards Scrabster was intense: a single track ‘A’ road, winding its way through immense rolling hills and the endless blanket bog known as The Flow Country.

This mysterious blanket bog is a beautiful, wild, windswept and open place. It has history sticking its bones through the skin of the earth, a railway track running singly through its valleys to the North Sea.  Walking over the water along the built-up path, or over the sucking mud; surrounded by tiny wild flowers, bobbing their heads, the air full of mizzle and midges and the scent of the wild.

I picked up a leaflet from Scottish Natural Heritage. The Flow Country is called ‘The Patterned Land’: “Their importance as an ancient, rare and fragile habitat should not be doubted. As one of the largest and most intact areas of blanket bog in the world, their significance is so great that they are protected by both national and European legislation. In recognition of their exceptional interest and universal value they are also under consideration as a World Heritage Site – the highest conservation accolade that can be awarded.”

“The wide wet landscapes are covered by a blanket of peat. Peat consists of partly decayed remains of plants preserved in a waterlogged sate. A cool, damp climate and a carpet of sponge-like bog moss has allowed the peat to accumulate over several thousand years, to depths of 4 metres or more.” In another leaflet about the Forsinain Trail I found more information about peat cutting…”Hand cutting peat for domestic fuel is a traditional activity that causes little long-term damage to the bog when the vegetated turfs are carefully replaced to regenerate, although larger-scale peat extraction can be very damaging and unsustainable. Once air dried, the peats, shrunk and hardened, are carried home to burn in the winter. Peat bogs consist of specialised moss and other bog plants covering a thick layer of peat.”

I was mesmerised by this landscape. There was a silence, a purity to the air, an atmosphere which is hard to describe or sum up in words, but my overwhelming feeling was of being able to breathe, to stretch my whole being and still be tiny in the immensity. I became more and more fascinated by peat as my month travelling the wild isles unfolded. I would go into peat cuttings near to roads, sink my fingers in to the black wet stuff, take tiny handfuls for drawing. It makes a rich brown mark; amazing to me to think that I am drawing with ancient materials, pregnant with association and rich in colour.

I’ve continued to work with peat in my studio in Newlyn, and also with ink made from plant materials, supplied by Pip Seymour. A favourite is logwood ink which can appear to change colour according to the paper I work on, and whether I’ve primed the paper – or not – with gesso.

Stromness is a delightful small town, a town which has bred explorers, outward-looking people. I loved The Pier Arts Centre, and I very much enjoyed meeting one of the curators, hearing about the people of Orkney, how the collection came into being, and how they organise exhibitions.

Notes from my diary:

“I am looking out of the window at the south shore of Loch Broom, where the water runs down to Ullapool. I’ll be getting the ferry soon to Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis.
A week ago on the drive here my heart soared as mountains rose from the horizon. Purple flanks, pink breathing masses of ancient rock.
Clouds as spirit whales over shark black sea; Orca pods skim the harbour waters in beautiful Stromness.
I saw a correspondence between the breasts of birds and the waters which swelled and carried them when they left their posts on the harbour breakwater at Helmsdale.
With reference to my work I’ve been thinking about what Barthes calls the ‘punctum’…a “detail that pierces the viewer and opens up the image, defying the closure any labelling implies” (Bronfen, The Knotted Subject).

I loved seeing the works of Barbara Hepworth at the Pier Arts Centre:  the fineness of her elegant figures which suggested being in landscape held the heart of the experience of standing against the wind and amazed before the Stones of the Ring of Brodgar.

Crawling into the hilly wombs of earth finding tiny bird wall piercings, so many ears to hear you in there. Runes like drawings made by earth herself, catching noble profiles growing upon their rocky forebears.

It was great meeting Neil Firth, the Director, and Carol Dunbar again. It was fascinating to hear about the Orcadian people, their openness, their open-mindedness, their expansiveness; they are an exploring people, their influence wide, clear.”

More notes from my diary:

Travelling south now, little by little. In Tarbert I saw sumptuous rolls of gorgeous Harris Tweed fabrics, pinks, violets, gold green moor-redolent hues.

I’ve been drawing every day, sitting and tuning into the spirit of place. A particular favourite of mine was Ardroil Sands at Uig.

It’s the place where the Lewis Chessmen were found – apparently by a cow hooking her horn around the handle of the casket. The enormous beaches were formed from the countless shell fragments of millions of shell-covered creatures who lived just outside the bay for centuries. I’ve enjoyed walking through ankle deep tide risings and experiencing the sea all around me, feeling her power and relentless nature. I’ve gathered handfuls of sea water for my drawings; I’ve scrabbled through peat bogs and dug my hands into their soft blackness, taking little handfuls to draw with.

It has been lovely to watch the eagle with two young rising on thermals at the foot of the nearby mountain, and to listen to the peeping sound of the sandpipers feeding at the tide-line.
I’ve lain in bed listening to the wing beats of ravens. When there is no one around they fly much lower and the pumping sound of air being pressed down was mesmerizing. I’ve spent time watching one raven who croaked incessantly, and always flew with beak open.
I’m very grateful indeed to a-n Artists Information Co. for supporting me so generously on this wonderful exploratory trip. I’ll be writing a full blog on the whole journey soon.

At Aird Uig, near ex-MOD base. Wild, naked, raw, pure, powerful. Place of eagle feasts and peat.

At Calanais Standing Stones. Spectacular, powerful.

I swam beside this beautiful bell by Marcus Vergette (one of a series) which rings at each high tide, sending song along the valley, up the hill to the cemetery. It was a perfect day. Warm, and the sea like crystal. It took my breath away but I was so glad I immersed myself. I felt so different afterwards.