Inside outside

Inside outside - acrylic on board 48" x 24" 2000

Another re-discovered photograph.   This of an intermediate stage of a painting begun in response to CCAD's summer holiday theme of' 'inside:outside' - alien and experimental and rather disliked.

I had already promised myself a final holiday at our part-owned, sadly-to-be-sold house in Orkney, spectacularly situated on Scapa Bay, and this was to be a time without limit, on my own there, for the first time ever;  a period of mourning for the fact that the place would no longer be available for me to explore ways of depicting its magic.

My aim was to capture the way the view dominated, flowing into the house - in actuality a converted, blocked-in sea-plane station - and impacting on our days there, to pay homage to the seventeen years we had been holidaying there, and to express both celebration and sadness.   Far too much, as I now know, to try and fit into one painting.   Hence it was never completed to my satisfaction, nor to that of the tutor who marked it on my return.   The fact that she had replaced the much-loved Les who, though we did not know it at the time, was mortally ill, added to the general dissatisfaction with the whole piece