A return to the Western Isles is looking on the cards with a umber of commissions based around that wonderfully visual place Ardnamurchan. My visit may have to be either a digital one or a memory one or possible both. As due to corvid restrictions travel at the moment is limited. None the less its good to be having positive conversations about developing new work. I've worked up a series of charcoal drawings so far based on and around  Portuairk.

Because visiting has been difficult I've taken up reading again Night Falls on Ardnamurchan is a story written by and about a crofting family. That is the Son on finding his fathers notebook-log decides to use it as a base for making a picture of his Fathers life, the last man to practice crofting. 'A hard life' is easy to say but for me unimaginable, hard to do, difficult gruelling week in week out.  I can emphasis totally with developing, attachment, a sense or love of a place. I've wandered around crofts, like I have abandoned Farm in the Lancashire Pennines and elsewhere and read books on the hardships of the people up until the 1980's.  Alasdair Maclean provides

a real insight.