Caithness artists are in fine fettle
Thurso High School
July 31 to August 11
Daily (except Sunday) 2pm-5pm and 6.30pm-9pm
FRESH after a fortnight in Orkney was probably a good time for me to visit the exhibition.
The goldfish-bowl effect of living in a smallish community can mean it’s hard to see people, places and attitudes without a lot of attendant baggage, and artists working here can fall foul of the “I kent his faither” syndrome that can undermine their efforts. But if familiarity can breed contempt, it’s equally true that absence makes (my) heart grow fonder.
Stepping gingerly between the rows of work – 345 pieces, including paintings, prints, drawings, woodcraft, glass and sculpture – I begin in a state of anxiety. How to give a fair overview of such a wide spectrum of work, fed by varying degrees of talent, insight, professional experience and technique, ambition and amateur enthusiasm?
I remind myself this is an open exhibition and upholds a very 21st-century dedication to inclusion.
My note-taking becomes a little bolder. Bolder still once I spy a tendency amongst some not to let attention to detail stand in the way of an amusing title. Settling for the fact the playing field is uneven, I decide it’s okay just to go with what I like and/or admire.
A series of lignographic prints of birds by Madeline Mackay is the first to stand out and get me scribbling. I’m not familiar with the process – at first I assume it’s a typo and these are lithographs – but the effect serves to make the artist’s cormorants and curlews both familiar and darkly strange at the same time.
Well-known names live up to well-deserved reputations: you could imagine David Body’s brightly coloured acrylics used in cartoon animation, turning his May Moon, Orcas of Stroma, Northern Lights and Puffins of Hoy into a slightly offbeat moving Caithness narrative as well as a still one.
Kitty Watt’s aquatints and David Cameron Watt’s paintings are well-established and familiar in style, colour and technique, yet always offer something new and closely observed; the stark sinuousness of Patricia Niemann’s mixed media portraits unsettles, the flaring passion of the subjects expressed in panels of bold red colour.
Liz O’Donnell’s Steading in Winter finds rich colour in a white winter landscape; Helen Moore’s mixed media Cable Sign Dunnet Beach, Cable Sign Shadow Dunnet Beach and Stroma Shed pluck out in colour the insignificant and the micro-familiar in local landscapes to give them totemic focus.
Ian Pearson’s irreverent glass sculptures take no hostages – you’ll either love them or hate them, while Denis Mann’s enamelled engraved glass plates appeal to the heart rather than the chuckle muscle.
Ian Charles Scott has an uncanny ability with pencil on paper – a portrait of RR Sinclair is so finely drawn it seems to render the subject in a kind of translucent, sci-fi brilliance, as if he’s been illuminated by lightning (or might in turn strike the observer with his own mesmeric lightning).
There are unfamiliar names whose pieces also attract: Julie Dent’s acrylics and John Luckie’s watercolours have a vitality and humour about them that creates their own weather. Don Lyall’s Home Soon should be taken up by Caithness Chamber of Commerce as the “before” half of a before and after Thurso town regeneration graphic.
Finally, there is a heartfelt tribute from Alan Begg to his father George Sinclair Begg (1931-2011) – Upper Dounreay farmer, joiner and self-taught artist. The work on display reflects the broad interests and life experience of a man who could turn his hand to anything and did, even while battling Parkinson’s disease. His toolbox and other working items sit poignantly below some of his paintings, my favourite being a mixed media one of a church scene.
My visit finds the community of artists in this county in fine fettle. They’re busy expressing unique perspectives on this corner of the northern hemisphere, and showing how it’s that bit different from everywhere else. What more could we ask?
Christine Gunn
