Born and bred on The Isle of Lewis, this is where I continue to live and work.  My paintings are filtered and captured from my life in this Hebridean landscape.  Although I take hundreds of photos and sketch regularly, when it comes to painting I am really deep-mining my memory.  I trust my instinct and begin.  I try to recapture the feeling of walking home through snowy villages when I was seven years old.  The recurrent beach paintings, looking out to sea toward outlying Islands, come from one of my first memories: the camping, picnicking paraphernalia dotted about; my flowery swimsuit, a tartan thermos, glinting caravans with patterned curtains. 

Shelter, be it croft-houses, sheilings or caravans, is integral to my paintings.  Signs of life and lifestyle present, figures absent.  Past and present, paint and wallpaper. The paint is fresh, newly-applied make-believe.  The wallpaper is vintage, the stuff of real life, a silent witness of generations, rescued from abandoned houses, re-born, re-presented in my painting, a new life from forgotten remnants. The fair comes to town.  An element of fantasy.  A wedding on the machair, temporary tents.  An escape from the rain, the mundane.

Running in parallel are the paintings of my travels; exotic buildings, far away places.  A sunset palace on the grand canal in Venice, a Moroccan sand castle.  Again - shelter, architecture. A glimmer of life/light through a window.

A flicker, a memory.