The Western Isles

Many of the paintings in this exhibition are from a recent visit to North Uist where the long sandy beaches and machair seem to stretch forever and breaking waves lead the eyes off to distant islands and endless horizons.

These islands are still wild and lonely places with a feeling of being on the edge of the world, often buffeted by Atlantic gales, cut off and remote but at other times serene in sunshine; they are places of many contrasts where time stands still and another sense of ones significance in the great scheme of things takes over. It is the same on the tops of the rugged mountains of the North West, or deep in the hidden glens that thread between them; those magical moments when the wind picks up a little, shifting the clouds, when shafts of sunlight break through to shine on distant lochans and sparkle on wet rock, these too speak on a larger scale.

Out on the high moorlands amongst the peat hags and the boulders small pockets of birches, rowans and pine grow below the rock faces where the wild animals cannot graze, these are quiet and secretive spots that give both shelter and intimate contact with the land. During the shorter days of late autumn and winter when the light is low and shadows long sometimes it can be survival itself that sharpens the experience; one must be well prepared to travel through a wilderness that can turn from benign to inhospitable in a few short minutes, when squalls of rain clouds obscure the hills or falling snow can cover the track. After all though this is a familiar landscape, reassuringly constant, it remains a place to walk through in all seasons certain in the knowledge that there will always be something new and special to see.

James Hawkins, September 2006