Walking in the woods last autumn I stopped among a group of huge beech trees to sketch. Sitting on a mossy hummock I started to draw an archway formed by two gnarled trees where a faint path meandered away from the main track into a different part of the wood. Fungi grew among the curling roots of the trees. Overhead the branches seemed to form into Celtic weavings. The arched spaces between trees sometimes seem to form portals or doorways into another world....I couldn't stay to explore that path but in my mind wandered along there and this is what I saw....

"The Faery Castle" - painting just completed today from the sketch I made last autumn.

One dawn some days ago the entire sky was the most amazing purple-violet colour above the hills to the southeast. The sky was cloudless and the colour began as deep magenta along the ridge of the hills rising into violet, mauve and deepest ultramarine purple. To the north a full moon sat low, huge and golden above a small cottage across the field. 

Although most of my work contains lots of detail I also enjoy painting in a looser style, simplifying shapes and looser patches of colour especially with landscapes. Here is "The Early Bird Sees the Gnome" (it started off being called The Early Bird Catches the Gnome, but then I changed it to "sees" because I felt "catches" implied that the bird might eat the gnome....) I was trying to capture that beautiful purple colour I'd seen in the sky...this photo has a bluer cast than the actual painting.

This painting is worked in acrylics on canvas - in this type of landscape painting I like to first create a textured ground by using heavy body acrylic colour as a ground layer on the canvas, texturing it fairly randomly using a palette knife and brushes and then when that's dry I paint thin glazes of colour on top. You can achieve some delicious textured/layered colour effects with various underlayers of paint showing through.

Later: I have just delivered this painting and another new one to the Tore Art Gallery (www.tore-art-gallery.co.uk)  for their Mixed Exhibition showing 1st March to the end of April. (Phew! I was varnishing the paintings last night and putting the strings on the backs this morning with the exhibition due to open tomorrow!) The gallery also has a few other small works of mine in the show. As an update to the previous Winter Exhibition at Tore Art Gallery, I was delighted that two pieces of mine sold :) one of which was "Hawk Woman" (posted in a previous blog of mine) and a landscape-with-cat pastel painting.

My son was playing on the computer long after I went to bed last night...and when I looked at my photo files this morning I found he had been creative with some of them such as this one using a photo of my cat:

I've been reading a fascinating book about my local area, "Culloden Tales" by Hugh G. Allison. The book is beautifully written and gives an overview of the area from prehistoric times moving forwards with descriptions of the earliest peoples, the coming of the Romans, lives of the Dark Age Celts and through to tales from Culloden Battlefield and tales of those who visit, work on or live near the moor now...including the supernatural.

I had walked on the battlefield many years ago and found the atmosphere so very sad, but recently have been feeling drawn to learn more so today went to visit the new Visitor Centre (National Trust for Scotland) at Culloden Moor. Their new displays and museum area are very impressive and informative. I particularly liked the intricately painted miniatures of Bonnie Prince Charlie. Then I took the guided tour of the moor battlefield itself. It is a poignantly atmospheric place (where the last battle on British soil took place on 16 April 1746)...there is one spot in particular in which I felt an almost palpable sadness.

Here's a photo I took of the old thatched Leanach Cottage which stands at the edge of the field. This cottage had a magical air - the thatch is made of heather, with mosses and ancient lichens and even a small sapling growing in it. Our guide Duncan, a re-enactor at the Visitor Centre is dressed in White Cockader unifom. I superimposed my photo of Duncan onto my photo of the cottage...I'm not good at photomanipulation, but it's not too bad?

Here's a photo I took at the Neolithic stone circles not far from my home, called Balnuaran of Clava or Clava Cairns (translated as The Good Stones). These cairns date from 2000 BC and seem to have connections with the moon, sun, the solstices and Celtic festivals. I visited the stones a few days after Imbolc (we were snowed in on the 2nd), the sun was shining for a change and there was a magical feeling of peace at this beautiful place. Huge Beech trees add their grace to the enclosure also.