Shared horizons : ready for the off ?

It all started as a collaboration with Bill Brody who works in Fairbanks, Alaska.

We work 4197 miles apart, but share a commitment to putting ourselves on the spot, both feeling you have to be in and of the landscape before you can really see what it looks like. Well, we picked a spot - 57°12′47.92″N 6° 0′39.82″W to be precise. Starting at Torrin, on the Isle of Skye, we are both about to spend 3 weeks together drawing, walking, painting, camping, talking. Three weeks in the shadows of the Cuillins, some of the oldest surface rocks on the planet. On Skye which, like Alaska, watches the sun set over a great ocean.

It’s only five days before I leave for Orkney on the first leg, where I will be working for a week on my own drawing and painting around Scapa Flow and possibly the outer islands if I can get a lift on a boat.

Packed ? Hardly. Ready ? Mostly. Nervous ? Highly. Excited ? Entirely.Bill Brody is also feeling anxious to get started, but he has to get halfway round the world first with everything he might need to work for three weeks in the open air on an island he’s never visited before. But the best work always comes from the strongest commitment. My main strategy is to keep it simple, so I’m only taking two media : charcoal and oils. This stuff has to be light enough to carry around with us but suitable to exhibit once we get it back. We have hopes for a show in Alaska and in London.