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In 2023 a long held ambition to set up a studio in the garden finally came to fruition - having a dedicated space to work in is a dream come true.
Taking part in 2023 for the first time as judge of the Highland Art Prize for the Royal National Mod held in Paisley that year was a challenge. An outstanding submission by the artist David Greenhall was finally announced the winner at an event attended by the President of the Royal National Mod, Maggie Cunningham, and held at the Briggait in Glasgow. The prize was accepted on David's behalf by Alex Ogilvie, a trustee of the London Gaelic Society and organiser of this now annual event.
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A special guest arrived in October 2024 to have her portrait done. Heather Dewar is 'Fraoch', the artist from Islay who has starred for many years in her own BBC Alba series.Fraoch has traveled all over the Western Isles interviewing her sitters in Gaelic while making a portrait of them. No easy task! The long running series was brought to an elegant finish with a programme celebrating her life and work by commissioning three artists to draw, photograph or sculpt a portrait of her. You can find out more here: https://www.instagram.com/bbc.alba/reel/DEHvNxJMjnd/ and here https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0026frm/dealbh-fraoich-a-portrait-of-heather
The ceramics project 'Conversational Fragments' began with a piece of blue china found on the beach near the place where I grew up on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. Over time the single fragment became a collection of small blue patterned pieces found on various shorelines around the Western Isles.
Thinking about where the pieces of china had come from brought back childhood memories of visits to the homes of elderly relatives and neighbours. Although most islanders were living in modern board of agriculture 'white houses' by the seventies when I was a teenager, some of the older generation in many districts still lived in traditional highland 'black houses'. Like my grandparents most of that generation had earned their living from fishing. In the summer the men and young women went off to the herring fishing, the men joining crews of east coast fishermen and the women working as herring girls following the fleets from ports as far apart as Lerwick and Fraserburgh in the north of Scotland to Yarmouth down on the east coast of England. At the end of a good season the herring girls returned home with gifts of beautiful china that might be displayed in the traditional dresser found in most homes.
Today the 'black house' is either the focus of a heritage project or the inspiration for an architect's modern take on the eco-friendly original. It's hard not to feel nostalgic for the past where china fragments washed up on the beach might have been found complete, shiny and new on a dresser shelf. Thoughts on who might have owned them, who drank from the cups and ate from the dishes and what their Gaelic speaking owners talked about inspired this project, 'Conversational Fragments'.
The fragments of Gaelic conversation decorating my china pieces were taken from the Gaelic language notebook I kept. Scraps of conversation overheard somewhere, memorised or jotted down quickly, now separated from the speaker and the conversations they were part of. The china fragments are still in a box somewhere. The Gaelic phrases have been studied and filed away.
The images on the china are taken from sketches of the coastlines around the Western Isles - the location of the china fragments and the home of the Gaelic language fragments. Each series in the project is made up of eight phrases linked by a common theme, from idioms associated with the sea to expressions linked by a single key word.
The full range of this series is available here at the Etsy shop for this project.
Thinking about where the pieces of china had come from brought back childhood memories of visits to the homes of elderly relatives and neighbours. Although most islanders were living in modern board of agriculture 'white houses' by the seventies when I was a teenager, some of the older generation in many districts still lived in traditional highland 'black houses'. Like my grandparents most of that generation had earned their living from fishing. In the summer the men and young women went off to the herring fishing, the men joining crews of east coast fishermen and the women working as herring girls following the fleets from ports as far apart as Lerwick and Fraserburgh in the north of Scotland to Yarmouth down on the east coast of England. At the end of a good season the herring girls returned home with gifts of beautiful china that might be displayed in the traditional dresser found in most homes.
Today the 'black house' is either the focus of a heritage project or the inspiration for an architect's modern take on the eco-friendly original. It's hard not to feel nostalgic for the past where china fragments washed up on the beach might have been found complete, shiny and new on a dresser shelf. Thoughts on who might have owned them, who drank from the cups and ate from the dishes and what their Gaelic speaking owners talked about inspired this project, 'Conversational Fragments'.
The fragments of Gaelic conversation decorating my china pieces were taken from the Gaelic language notebook I kept. Scraps of conversation overheard somewhere, memorised or jotted down quickly, now separated from the speaker and the conversations they were part of. The china fragments are still in a box somewhere. The Gaelic phrases have been studied and filed away.
The images on the china are taken from sketches of the coastlines around the Western Isles - the location of the china fragments and the home of the Gaelic language fragments. Each series in the project is made up of eight phrases linked by a common theme, from idioms associated with the sea to expressions linked by a single key word.
The full range of this series is available here at the Etsy shop for this project.
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