Scotia Desertia

A drunk man looks at the Scottish Enlightenment’

There was a band from Ayr that used to go and see called ‘Dead Friends’. I think they took their name from The Cure song ‘World War’ but I could be wrong.

Everything becomes past tense eventually.

My pal Geeksy used to sit drinking on the roof of his flat on Fullarton Street and watch the sun setting over Arran and the Firth of Clyde. I sat up there with him once looking out over the town that I had grown up in.

His flat was full of things and words that I was far too removed from, that I should have connected with somehow but I didn’t.

It’s too late now.

'After Peter Seddon: Memories construct a different picture, Essie Stewart is playing the accordion again for Richard Burton'

In the 1980 the artist Peter Seddon created a series of large scale pastel drawings based on the Highland Clearances that explored themes such as history, memory and cultural difference.

These were included as part of the 1986 exhibition ‘As an Fhearann/ From the Land’ organised by An Lantair Gallery in Stornaway to mark the centenary of the Crofting Act. I visited the exhibition when it first came to Glasgow and it had a huge impact on not only my practice but also how I was to view the Highlands and Islands of Scotland that I would be living in for the next fifteen or so years of my life.

‘I’ve always felt that stories and pictures were a way of keeping people I knew alive and as they were, portraits for instance that show people young or middle aged long after they’re dead and keep them remembered long after they’re forgotten’.

Alasdair Gray

‘To begin at the beginning….’

Something loosely based on events that took place in Glasgow on the afternoon of June 3rd 1990.

‘The Big Day’ was a series of free concerts held across Glasgow to mark it’s year as European City of Culture.

Except it’s not really just about that at all, it never is…

In the 1980 the artist Peter Seddon created a series of large scale pastel drawings based on the Highland Clearances that explored themes such as history, memory and cultural difference.

These were included as part of the 1986 exhibition ‘As an Fhearann/ From the Land’ organised by An Lantair Gallery in Stornaway to mark the centenary of the Crofting Act. I visited the exhibition when it first came to Glasgow and it had a huge impact on not only my practice but also how I was to view the Highlands and Islands of Scotland that I would be living in for the next fifteen or so years of my life.

The following images and notes are the start of an attempt to explore the themes that I first came across in Peters work and to place them in a personal context.

‘Essie Stewart is playing the accordion again for Richard Burton'

The drawing takes it’s subject matter from Tim Neats’ book ‘The Summer Walkers’ about the pearl fishers and travelling families of Scotland.

‘Bill Travers is looking across the Firth of Lorne again’

There’s a point in the film ‘Ring of Bright Water’ when the main character first travels north and gets off the old Calmac bus to look across the Firth of Lorne towards Mull in the distance.

Of course the movie takes vast liberties with both the book and indeed the story of Gavin Maxwell himself but somehow for me, with that scene it all gets forgotten.

Ben Buie, Sgur Dearg, Dùn da Ghàoithe are in front of him like incomplete notes, each a hesitant beginning to something that isn’t there anymore.

Psalmody #1

View from a window in Thousand Oaks, California in 1966

The start of an ongoing imaginary Italian landscape

An ongoing imaginary Italian landscape with added screen distortion

An ongoing imaginary Italian landscape: house with trampoline and car

A bicycle and a swing in northern Italy