The Last Munro

April 23, 2025 David Page

An exhibition at Calgary Arts from 31st May to 8th June 2025 exploring Ben More in paint, the highest peak on the Isle of Mull.

Swathed

1000 x 1000 Acrylic on Canvas

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As children, we’re often drawn to the idea of collections. In my day, it was toy cars, Airfix models, or football cards. As I grew older, that instinct evolved — first into art and architecture books shaping also my professional practice as an architect, then into visiting cities, ticking off notable buildings and artworks, and, more prosaically, walking up hills. My own collection of hill walks, before heart issues curtailed such ventures, was modest. But each climb left an indelible memory: a day stepping away from the city, into the wild, exposed to the elements — and ultimately, on top of everything.

There are many collectors of mountain conquests, and Scotland offers a particular kind of paradise for them. Sir Hugh Munro’s first listing of hills over 3,000 feet — now known as Munros — created a national pastime. Not to be outdone, John Corbett and Percy Donald added their own collections: the Corbetts (over 2,500 feet) and the Donalds (over 2,000 feet). The Scottish hills, in their variety and accessibility, are a collector’s dream — each one climbable in a day, yet deeply memorable.

For the extreme Munro collectors — like Hamish Brown, who climbed them all in a single continuous journey — the goal has always been completion. Some have done them all in winter. Some have run them. Some have completed multiple rounds. The determination and drive behind these personal quests to complete the collection is part of what makes the Munros such a compelling cultural phenomenon.

In that set, Ben More on the Isle of Mull holds a unique place. It is the only Munro on a standalone island — Skye, by contrast, is now linked to the mainland by a bridge. Hamish Brown began his legendary Munro round here, but for many climbers, Mull’s distinct character makes Ben More the ideal candidate to be the final summit in their collection — the Last Munro.

Homage

1000 x 1000 Acrylic on Canvas

Huddled

1000 x1000 Acrylic on Canvas

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Regal

1200 x 1200 Acrylic on Canvas

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Embracing

1500 x 1500 Acrylic on Canvas

At its peak, Ben More rewards the climber with a spectacular panorama: Jura and Colonsay lie to the south; the scattered rocks of the west sweep out past Iona and its abbey to the islands of Tiree and Coll, with Skerryvore Lighthouse flickering between. Closer in, Ulva and the Treshnish Isles are framed by Mull’s rugged edge, while to the east, a dramatic volcanic core rises in ridges and outcrops — a geological architecture of sorts, shaped by time and weather, not human hands.

The idea for this series came from my neighbour and fellow artist in Tobermory, Angus Stewart. Stewart has painted Ben More many times over the years, and his recent painting of the south face has become a popular print for visitors. Knowing my fascination with esoteric collecting, he generously passed the baton — or the mountain — into my not-entirely-safe hands.

Fractured

1000 x 1000 Acrylic on Canvas

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Diaphanous

2000 x 1000 Acrylic on Canvas (diptych)

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Godlike

2000 x 1000 Acrylic On Canvas (diptych)

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Illuminated

1000 x 1000 Acrylic on Canvas

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Of course, there are many precedents. The island and its rocky outcrops has drawn artists and musicians alike — from the elemental force of J. M. W. Turner to the musical notes of Felix Mendelssohn — all trying to express its raw pull. Lithographers in the 18th and 19th centuries etched its form into the collective imagination, part of a broader romantic vision of the Scottish west coast as wild, sublime, and epic.

In the 1920s and ’30s, the Scottish Colourists brought a gentler palette to the region. Francis Cadell and S. J. Peploe, escaping the city for Iona, painted the distant silhouette of Ben More rising above the Burg. Their luminous works captured the island’s shifting hues as light broke through cloud — a vision later embraced by artists like MacDonald, Archibold, and Jolomo, whose work reframed the west coast as a radiant antidote to urban greyness. Even Tobermory’s cheerful, multi-coloured harbour front can be seen as part of this tradition.

These Colourists were, in turn, indebted to Paul Cézanne, and for me too, particularly his persistent exploration of Mont Sainte-Victoire. In painting that single mountain more than twenty times, Cézanne monumentalised a motif. Claude Monet did the same with his haystacks. They were collectors too — not of objects, but of perspectives.

Incorporeal

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Gilded

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Ghostly

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Luminary

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That idea of repetition with variation inspired my approach. But this collection differs in that there is no single, fixed motif. Ben More does not reveal itself in one view alone. Its power lies in its multiplicity — how it shifts depending on where you stand: from afar, from up close, or from its very slopes. It has real presence.

In some ways, my painter’s eye still carries an architect’s instinct: I’m drawn to structure, silhouette, and how light interacts with form. But painting allows for a more direct emotional and physical response. I pour, scrape, and layer paint much like the elements sculpt Mull’s landscape — not with precision, but with energy, weather, and time.

As Pippa Reade expressed so eloquently in her introduction, the mountain is defined by its “grit and grace.” These are the twin qualities I sought to capture — the roughness of the climb, the sharp angles and shifting textures underfoot, but also the elegance of the contours and the sense of release that comes from standing at the top, held in a wider horizon.

Ben More was the last Munro I could climb. But in this collection, it stands in for them all — each with their tactile, sometimes brutal physicality, nobility, and grace. These paintings are my tribute to that journey, and to the mountain that completes the set for many climbers.

Silhouetted

1000 x 1000 Acrylic on Canvas

Grit and Grace

1500 x 1500 Acrylic on Canvas

Sleeping

1200 x 1200 Acrylic on Canvas

Our Land

August 10, 2024 David Page

An exhibition at Canvas Belfast of a collection of paintings inspired by Irish Poets and their remarkable insights about the countryside around us.

Our Land

Acrylic on Canvas

1200 x 1200

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Like May Morton and John Hewitt, Patrick Kavanagh imbues the land, the soil, the growth with human personality as he writes, 'You clogged the feet of my boyhood’. His words are tactile, get between your nails and dirty your palms, just as in this painters mark making. He was a farmer come poet and his memories of the fields seem bitter sweet. Amidst the verses of his poem ‘Stony Grey Soil’ he gives the working of the soil a voice and from our contemporary perspective, a warning;

'O green-life-conquering plough!’

Patrick Kavenagh, An Anthology of Modern Irish Poetry, (Wes Davis Ed) p69, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

The Sound of Paint

Acrylic on Canvas

2000 x 1000

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Alice Milligan's two-part poem 'On the Cliff' with its lovely written and visual shift mid poem of ocean at sea level, 'roaring', to as heard on the upper slopes, its 'murmur' inspired this personal memory of the Fair Head. This diptych, in the spirit of the poem, juxtaposes in the first canvas the 'noise' of thick splattered, squelching, torn, bruised and battered paint with the scraped thin surfaces and spread residues of the second canvas.

Poetry by Women in Ireland - A Critical Anthology 1870 - 1970 (Lucy Collins Ed) p164, Liverpool University Press.

Weight of Light

Acrylic on Canvas

1200 x 1200

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Reflecting on a completed painting, a simple line can sometimes sum it up. John Hewitt’s poem the 'Glen of Light' has such a line for this painting, where in extolling the sense of openness and light suggested in the title, he observes the airy valley void has 'body palpable'.

John Hewitt, The Collected Poems of John Hewit (Frank Ormsby Ed) p231, The Blackstaff Press, Belfast.

Cloud or Cliff

Acrylic on Canvas

1200 x 1200

Twentieth-century pioneers of modernism in art, architecture, and poetry broke with tradition, using their understanding of the past to innovate. They knew what to change. Subsequent artists, influenced by a purer form of modernism, often disregarded historical context, impacting architecture, particularly in older settlements. Modernism shifted art’s focus to marks, processes, and techniques, leading to abstraction.

Later generations began to question what was lost in this pursuit of the new, leading to a synthesis of modernism with earlier traditions. Richard Diebenkorn exemplified this shift by moving from abstraction to a series of paintings depicting West Coast suburbia in the 1960s, only to return to abstract grid-like works later.

John Montague’s poem ‘The Family Piano’ reflects this fracturing, with its chorus ‘My cousin is smashing the piano’ evoking memories of past music and performers. The poem’s chaotic conclusion, with a modernist parody of the family dog ‘howling to high heaven: John Cage serenading Stockhausen!’ suggests a richer view of modernism’s evolution. This painting seeks to blend traditional perspectives with a modern sense of abstraction, recognizing both historical context and contemporary innovation.

John Montague, An Anthology of Modern Irish Poetry (Wes Davis) p272 - p273, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Boundary Lines

Acrylic on Canvas

1500 x 1500

As you scan the lower slopes of the northeast Antrim Hills, you cannot help but be captivated by the enchanting tapestry of field and fence lines. The darker tones in this painting reflect John Hewitt’s cautionary reflections on his public life, far from ‘this rim of arable that ends in foam.’ He wisely observes:

‘…so many fences stretch between our minds.’

John Hewitt, The Collected Poems of John Hewitt (Frank Ormsby Ed) p310, The Blackstaff Press, Belfast

Field Painting

Acrylic on Canvas

1500 x 1500

This painting echoes a common theme of Irish poets: the field. The enclosures of the mid-1800s, recorded in early mapping, established the tracery-like pattern that drapes the landscape. Patrick Kavanagh's poem ‘Ploughman’ observes how the plough overturns the ‘lea-green’ and ‘paints the meadow brown.’

Patrick Kavenagh, An Anthology of Modern Irish Poetry, (Wes Davis Ed) p67, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Art Class

Acrylic on Canvas

1200 x 1200

Our house sits on the edge of the Glens of Antrim, the home territory of poet John Hewitt. In his poem ‘The Glens of Antrim,’ Hewitt elucidates his craft, describing how he has ‘drawn this landscape,’ sometimes beginning with ‘scribbles’ and then ‘drilling’ his pen to reveal the universe of his interest.

In ‘Art Room in a City School,’ Hewitt extends his technical virtuosity by examining the visual artist's landscape toolkit with a ‘loaded paintbrush,’ ‘wrought’ surfaces,‘scissored textures,’ and by exploiting ‘hoarded scraps.’ Thus, in these paintings, Hewitt's work inspires a sanctioning of experimentation and mark-making of all forms—fierce application, scratchings, scrapings, deposition, rubbings, sandings, and slashings.

Sources - John Hewitt - The Glens of Antrim and Art Room in a City School 'The Collected Poems of John Hewitt' - edited by Frank Ormsby P251 and P181

The Kiss

Acrylic on Canvas

1500 x 1500

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William Forbes Marshall, known as ‘The Bard of Tyrone,’ wrote the poem ‘Purple and Gold’ about 19th-century emigration. It contrasts the new life in the American West with the poignancy and separation from memories of the homeland—a common theme for the displaced in 19th-century Ireland and Scotland.

The painting explores the idea of light as hope and space, captured at the top of the painting. This is contrasted with dark and textured elements representing memory at the bottom, an evocation prompted by the lines:

‘And the sun that smites the prairie

Throws a kiss to dark Tyrone.’

William Forbes Marshall, Livin in Drumlister p24, The Blackstaff Press

Poets Shroud

Acrylic on Canvas

1500 x 1500

Louis MacNeice's provides a two part clue to me, how to go about painting and for this I turn to his poem 'Train to Dublin' as my tutor. The first clue is his use of the early twentieth century exploration of a variable viewpoint as captured in the flashing images that pass the train window in quick time.

The second is the quality in his writing of densification of what he calls in the first line of the poem, 'half-thoughts', into as dense a written space as possible. Not catching a moment but many moments in close proximity, in different moods and lights. In that way he captures the racing mind in his poetic net just as the painting seeks to do.

Louis MacNeice, Collected Poems 1925-1948 by Louis MacNeice p83, Faber and Faber 1949.

Rathlin West Light

Acrylic on Canvas

Diptych 3000 x 1500

Sailing along the west coast of Scotland to the home port of Coleraine, the western lighthouse of Rathlin Island was always a reassuring marker of return. Embedded like a stud brooch into the rock face, it was first seen from the sea and later, after docking in the harbour and walking across the island, from land.

Initially, it served as an essential utility with its unique upside-down light arrangement, where the light is unusually positioned at the bottom of the structure. The second view was from the top rooms of the lighthouse, now a visitors’ centre promoting ecological responsibility, overlooking the rocks and the cacophonous noise of the seabird nesting grounds.

This juxtaposition of utility and visitor facility only became apparent to me after discovering Derek Mahon's poem ‘The Automation of the Irish Lights,’ which includes the West Light of Rathlin and offers a perceptive observation on the shift from pure functionality to a focus on visitor experience.

Derek Mahon, The Yellow Book, p54, Gallery Books

Heaven

Acrylic on Canvas

1500 x 1500

One evening at the outset of this project, while sitting with friends, I idly asked if their extensive book collection contained anything about the Irish landscape—how it was worked, framed, farmed, and understood.

During the subsequent search, they found a little pamphlet full of notes called ‘A Green Hill Far Away’ by E. W. Lovell. It was about the wife of the 19th-century Bishop of Derry, Cecil Francis Alexander, who, among many hymns including that of the title of the book, wrote ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful.’

It was the childhood memories evoked by the third verse that caught my attention and inspired the journey of this exhibition, encapsulated in the simple idea of an ephemeral brightness seen across the hilltops:

‘The purple-headed mountains...

The sunset and the morning,

That brightens up the sky…’

Cecil Frances Alexander, A Green Hill Far Away - a life of Mrs C. F. Alexander by E W Lovell, Friends of St Columb's Cathedral.

Life Drawing

Acrylic on Canvas

1200 x 1200

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It has to be remembered that the landscapes I admire, if only from afar were not necessarily always as they appear now. Alice Milligan's poem 'There were trees in Tir Chonaill' (Donegal) laments the cutting down of the forests which blanketed the landscape .There is of course beauty in what she calls the 'bogland lonely' and a haunting quality to the 'nude' profile of the surrounding hills. Perhaps it is that sense of vulnerability that provides the attraction to the painter.

Poetry by Women in Ireland - A Critical Anthology 1870 - 1970 (Lucy Collins Ed) p160 - p161, Liverpool University Press

Blue

Acrylic on Canvas

1000 x 1000

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Richard Kirkland writes that there were in Michael Longley’s estimation three 'energetic spurts' in 20th century Northern Ireland poetry. May Morton was one of a group of poets including John Hewitt responsible for the mid-century spurt. Her poetry imbues the landscape with feminine sensibility, Kirkland calls it an ‘erotically charged delight in the Ulster countryside’. This painting inspired by her poem 'Blue' is one such piece from a remarkable collection called 'Dawn and Afterglow' all the more poignant as it has a poem called 'Sunset off Mull', my other home.

May Morton, Dawn and Afterglow, Quota Press

Richard Kirkland, The Politics of Partition: Poetry and Northern Ireland in the 1940s p219 - p224 in the Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Poetry, (Fran Brearton and Adam Gillis Ed), Oxford University Press.

Palette of the Glens

Acrylic on Canvas

1500 x 1500

Moira O'Neill's ‘Songs of the Glens of Antrim’ (1863-1955) is a heartfelt lament for the glens. Similar to William Forbes Marshall’s memories of home, emigration is the driving force behind the collection, with the pain of separation more easily captured in poetry. ‘Lookin Back’ perhaps conveys a bit of that anguished sentiment, but in a unique way using colour. It is a colour chart poem, intertwining memories of colours into verses of recollection.

For example, in verse one, 'white gulls flying' and 'waves are green'; in verse three, 'roses for miles an' redder than ours' and 'black-eyed gold sunflowers'. The second verse, which inspired this painting, includes 'airy blue' and 'shadows between are blue', contrasting the mountains of the Rockies with those of home.

In the frontispiece of one of the books in the Linenhall Library, a previous owner inserted a newspaper clipping about Moira O'Neill and her travels from Cushendun to Canada and then to Wexford, which includes the wise advice,

‘She was sensible about her talent and she stopped writing when she had no more to say.’

Moira O'Neill, Songs of the Glens of Antrim p56/7

Mark Reading

Acrylic on Canvas

Diptych 2000 x 1000

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John Montague's poem ‘A Lost Tradition’ reflects on how place-names help us navigate our landscapes, yet laments our inability to understand the language and, consequently, the stories they convey.

Painting these landscapes involves more than merely capturing what you see; it also requires understanding what has shaped them. As Montague reminds us:

‘The whole landscape a manuscript.’

John Montague, An Anthology of Modern Irish Poetry (Wes Davis) p265 - p266, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

SHOREWARD Mull

May 26, 2024 David Page

2024 Exhibition Calgary Art Gallery Mull.

Artist’s Overview

This exhibition, hosted by Calgary Art Gallery, Mull, showcases fourteen paintings looking shoreward from the sea. I hope as you explore these works, you will find yourself as I have been, immersed in the timeless dialogue between the sea, the rocky island edge and the veils which drape these views.

***Docking -*** *Craignure*
*1000 x 1000 Acrylic on Canvas*
***available***

Sea

I operate from two studios, one in Tobermory, Mull, Scotland, and the other in Kells, Co Antrim, Northern Ireland. This seemingly disparate geographical arrangement holds a surprising historical connection. Between the years 495 CE and 850 CE, these regions formed part of the kingdom known as 'Dalriada', a realm linked by the sea in terms of movement, trade, and political ties. Archaeologist Dr. Ewan Campbell, in his essay Were the Scots Irish? delves into this historical era, describing Argyll and Antrim as a 'maritime province'.[i] This sentiment is echoed by Robert Crawford, who writes of Iona as the heart of a navigable archipelago extending from Ireland to Mull:

For Columba, sailing from Ireland to Iona in the year 563AD, and for his medieval successors the island was at the heart of a navigable archipelago extending as far as Ireland to the west, Mull to the east, and with the rest of the Hebrides on all sides.[ii]

Before the advent of proper roads and air travel, the sea was the primary transport network, a fact I came to appreciate through yearly sailing expeditions with my family from Northern Ireland. Seen from the sea, the west coast landfall and scenery beyond provides a unique perspective. As a deckhand on Jim Burnside’s many boats, we explored that archipelago for many years, with Mull, and particularly Tobermory, as our end goal.

An intriguing aspect of Mull is that, even in modern times, its approach remains almost exclusively maritime. There are no bridges, no tunnels; only a modest airstrip serves as a connection. Mull therefore slowly unveils its rugged character as one draws near, with the shoreline coming into focus - each crag and cliff, every undulating plane, emerges from the mist as the land rises towards distant heights. Inspired by this intimate perspective, this collection of paintings circumnavigates the Isle of Mull, looking back to its shoreline from the sea.

[i] Were the Scots Irish? - Ewan Campbell - Antiquity No 75 (2001), pp 285-292.

[ii] The Book of Iona - An Anthology edited by Robert Crawford, Introduction px.

***Leeward*** *- Grasspoint*
*1000 x 1000 acrylic on canvas*
***sold***

***Still*** *- Croggan*
*1000 x 1000 acrylic on canvas*
***sold***

***Calm****- Loch Spelve*
*1000 x 1000 acrylic on canvas*
***available***

***Backdrop****- Lochbuie*
*1000 x 1000 acrylic on canvas*
***available***

***Temple****- Burg*
*1000 x 1000 acrylic on canvas*
***sold***

Rock

The writer John Keats, in letters to his brother Tom in 1818, encapsulates the enduring allure of Scotland's west coast landscape:

The western coast of Scotland is a most strange place - it is compos'd of rocks Mountains, mountainous and rocky Islands intersected by Lochs - you can go but a small distance any where from salt water in the highlands.[i]

Mull embodies this essence of the west coast. Its convoluted profile seems to encapsulate the full spectrum of how land meets the sea. This is not a gentle shoreline; while there are notable beaches at Calgary and off Fionnphort, they are small oases amidst a landscape of exposed ruggedness - Keats’ rock unveiled in all its eroded forms. From sheer cliff edges of split, shattered geology to smoothed and moulded pebbles in tumbled edges at the foot of rolling slopes, Mull's coast bears the marks of millennia of the sea's powerful actions.

These eroded rocks, worn, broken, and split away over time, have revealed new silhouettes, shapes, and surfaces. The process of creating these paintings mirrors this emergence. Layers of paint are left to dry at various stages, then with sprays, heat, pressure, and mediums, the process of erosion begins. Material is gathered, redistributed, and nothing is wasted in this artistic echo of nature's own transformations.

[i] The Book of Iona - An Anthology edited by Robert Crawford, p275.

***Intertidal****- Loch Scridain*
*1000 x 1000 acrylic on canvas*
***available***

***Veil****- Loch Beg*
*1000 x 1000 acrylic on canvas*
***available***

***Loch of the Cliffs****- Loch na Keal*
*1000 x 1000 acrylic on canvas*
***available***

***Leaving****- Calgary*
*1000 x 1000 acrylic on canvas*
***sold***

Veils

However, to reduce the perspective of Mull from the sea to merely an observation of rocks, albeit some colossal ones, would be overly simplistic. There is a deeper interplay at work.

In Guy Peploe's book about his grandfather, the artist S J Peploe, he quotes his grandfather discussing the essence of scenes like these:

We had miserable weather in Iona this year - worst in living memory - gales and rain the whole time. I got very little done. But that kind of weather suits Iona: the rocks and distant shores seen through falling rain, veil behind veil, take on an elusive quality, and when the light shines through one has visions of rare beauty. I think I prefer it these days to your blue skies and clear distances.[i]

Winter rain, autumn mist, summer haze, and spring growth—all of these elements create veils, as do the patina of lichen covering rocks, the grasses and heathers sprouting from them, and the birch and larger plantations that blanket the hillsides. These, too, are veils.

As an artist, I incorporate the idea of these overlay veils into my work on the scratched and pitted surfaces on the canvas. With soft sponges, kitchen roll, and palette knives, I apply or release washes of colours, imprint soft textural impressions, and layer wet absorptive layers to mask and frame, deepen and lighten, age and yet freshen the surface. The process is an abstract echo of nature’s weathering on the canvas.

The culmination of this exploration is the exhibition SHOREWARD Mull at Calgary Art Gallery, presenting fourteen paintings that offer a distinctive view of Mull from the sea.

[i] S J Peploe 1871-1935 - Guy Peploe (2000), p73.

***Unyielding****- Caliach point*
*1000 x 1000 acrylic on canvas*
***available***

***Narrows****- Dervaig*
*1000 x 1000 acrylic on canvas*
***available***

***Blue Glen****- Glengorm*
*1000 x 1000 acrylic on canvas*
***available***

***Minor Light****- Sound of Mull*
*1000 x 1000 acrylic on canvas*
***available***

Highland Colours

November 24, 2023 David Page

I am delighted the Highland Colours show of work has moved to the City Contemporary Art Gallery in Perth for December and January. The ideas behind the pictures explore the colours of the the Highlands as seen through the eyes of Gaelic place-names.

25th November 2023 - 14th January 2024

I have a deep affection for the Scottish mountains, whether walking their slopes or simply observing them from a distance. Their dynamic nature, shaped by weather, time of day, and seasons, imprints a distinct identity upon the landscape, rendering the surrounding places unforgettable. My artistic pursuit revolves around encapsulating this paradoxical essence—of enduring presence entwined with ephemeral change—within my paintings.

The vistas we perceive—the contours, textures, and silhouettes, veiled by atmospheric nuances—are outcomes of ancient geological processes: tectonic shifts, volcanic activity, and glacial shaping, spanning millennia, as outlined by McKirdy, Gordon, and Crofts in 'Land of Mountain and Flood'. These forces, coupled with subsequent erosion, sedimentation, plant growth, and decay, conspire to craft the canvas of our landscapes.

In painting, or reimagining, these landforms the intention is not to record a set moment in time, but rather to mirror and emulate the processes that created the landscape in the first place but this time with paint. In as many imagined processes as possible, I layer, pour, throw, and spread the paint, followed by soaking and repeating the process. This intricate cycle involves scraping back through layers to varying depths, occasionally to the canvas's origin, revealing hints of diverse colours and textures. The unearthed masses and granules are then redistributed across the canvas. Through soaking or hosing, the canvas is primed for the next step, where softened residues find new locations amidst added drips, sponging, scouring, and sandpapering. This dynamic composition is further textured by dabbing with cloth and applying, then removing, drying sheets from the surfaces.

Yet all the time I am watching for the moment when it works, when the chaotic energy leaves a mark that resembles places visited or experienced, around which the final landscape image can evolve, the relationships between the parts moderated, balanced and composed together with a further layer of atmospheric meteorological chaos. These final conscious moves are an echo of the human hand that has managed our landscapes for the last millennia but now combined with simulated momentary weather effects captured in further swirling motion, drenching, wiping dripping and drying.

Feeding this visual interest and subsequent action are the books describing the feats of climbers scaling these hills and one book in particular caught my interest and shaped the exhibition for this year’s Highland Art show at the Wasps Gallery in the Briggait in Glasgow and now the showing at the CCA in Perth.

'Burn on the Hill' by Elizabeth Allan documents the story of the Reverend Ronald Burn who was the first person to complete all the Munro’s and tops between 1914 and 1926. Whilst born and brought up in Aberdeenshire, he largely accomplished this feat alone from his base in Oxford, taking the train up any holidays he had and walking across country from farmhouse to estate cottage, he thoroughly documented these walks, climbs and stays in detailed diary entries and in his maps.

He was a literary man and it is from these diaries that we get a sense of the subtlety of his observations which range across history, nature, terrain, politics and qualities of experience, in particular one that interests me - colour.

Fionn (white - fair)

1000 x 1000 Acrylic on Canvas

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Dearg (red)

1500 x 1500 Acrylic on Canvas

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An entry from Burn’s diary that described the colours he was seeing in November 1921 recounted, ‘The day was sunny and warm except when a wind sprang up. The colours were lovely. A dark brown on the hills contrasted with the lighter shades near us. The bleak bareness of winter neither of us believes in, and to one that looks about there is plenty of colour.’

In 1923 he observed, ‘there were two kinds of blue clouds, greenish to the west and the usual blue to the east. I have never seen this difference before.’

In 1927 a note stated, ‘The rain was off when I supped, watching a lovely long indigo bank all along Beinn Ghlas under a cap of snowy mist and tawnyish lower slopes.’

His descriptions have a visceral sensitivity. Elizabeth Allan recounts one episode from the 1915 diary, ‘Next morning (June 5th) Ronnie set off to explore the high hills north of the loch: Meallan Rairigidh, as he called it, with its ‘dining saloon’ cairn, then Sgurr Mor, Meall a’ Chrasgaidh and Sgurr nan Clach Geala in that order. He puzzled over the latter name- sharp pointed hill of the white stones - since he could see none, but farther west next day keeper Macrae at the Nest of Fannich pointed out the white stones on that side of the hill, shining in the sun. The bealach to the south was Cadha Dearg Mor - big red pass - and did indeed have red sand.’

Dubh (black)

1200 x 1200 Acrylic on Canvas

Burn’s puzzlement at the meaning of the Gaelic name is not a surprise, he was also a collector of place-names and his diaries document his evenings spent with whoever he stayed with collecting and recording that Local knowledge. Reference is made to him marking his maps with these names and his will bequeathed them to the 'Scottish Mountaineering Club' with the wish 'that those one inch maps with place names added be at the disposal of any map reviser'. They appear to have been lost so we don't know how much of his collection of names has entered the archive of place - names which has been gathered.

In his time, place-name collecting was not a unique activity, a reference earlier in his 1915 walk discusses the merits of what appears to have been a key contemporary source book – W. J. Watson’s ‘Place Names of Ross-shire’ published a number of years earlier. Watson’s introduction identifies what might be termed six base colours integrated into this collection of region specific names, Dubh, Fionn, Glas, Liath, Gorm, and Ruadh.

A century later, this colour compendium of mountain colours was enhanced in a Cambridge University Hillwalking club glossary by Mark Jackson identifying sixteen colours. In 2021, a blog by Sofia Graham called 'Blar Buidhe and Other Colours in Iona Place-names' with a splendid colour chart of place-names identified by the eleven ‘Gaelic’ colours found on Iona. In her blog she referenced Bateman and Purser’s book 'Window to the west: culture and environment in the Scottish Gaidhealtachd', 2020, with their examination of the origins and interpretations of colour.

Riabhach (brindled)

1500 x 1500 Acrylic on Canvas

Glas (grey - green)

1200 x 1200 Acrylic on Canvas

The accumulation of these learnings led to the creation of this exhibition titled 'Highland Colours.' Its conceptual mountain colour chart is derived from names extracted through an analysis of Munro's, Corbett's, Graham's, and Donald's charts, documenting mountains over 3000ft, 2500ft, and 2000ft in the Highlands and Lowlands. Fourteen colours stood out in that review as being associated with mountains and hills in these charts.

Fionn, Dearg, Dubh, Riabhach, Glas and Breac are being shown in ‘The Room’ at the CCA in Perth. These six paintings have been inspired by these Gaelic colour names and, whilst I am not a Gaelic speaker, the collection is a mark of gratitude to the sensibility of generations who crafted these identifying names and to the subsequent scholarship that preserved their significance.

Breac (speckled)

1200 x 1200 Acrylic on Canvas

Exhibition - Highland Colours

September 23, 2023 David Page

I am delighted to have a show of work at The Briggait, Glasgow during October as part of the Royal National Mod. The exhibition was part of the prize for winning the 2022 Highland Art Prize. The ideas behind the pictures explore the colours of the the Highlands as seen through the eyes of Gaelic place-names.

3rd - 27th October, 2023

Mon-Fri 9.30am 5.30pm.

Saturday 14th & Sunday 15th Oct 9.30am - 5.30pm.

Saturday 21st October 9.30am - 5.30pm.

Please scroll down to view the exhibition pictures and prices.

Above: Liath (grey blue)

1000 x 1000mm Acrylic on Canvas

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Above: Uaine (green)

1500 x 1500mm Acrylic on Canvas

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Above: Odhar (dun coloured)

1200 x1200mm Acrylic on Canvas

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Above: Fionn (white - fair)

1000 x 1000mm Acrylic on Canvas

£1250

Above: Buidhe (yellow)

1500 x 1500mm Acrylic on Canvas

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Above: Gorm (blue)

1200 x 1200mm Acrylic on Canvas

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In 1923 he observed, ‘there were two kinds of blue clouds, greenish to the west and the usual blue to the east. I have never seen this difference before.’

In 1927 a note stated, ‘The rain was off when I supped, watching a lovely long indigo bank all along Beinn Ghlas under a cap of snowy mist and tawnyish lower slopes.’

Above: Dubh (black)

1200 x 1200mm Acrylic on Canvas

£1500

Above: Geal (white - bright)

1500 x 1500mm Acrylic on Canvas

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Above: Glas (grey - green)

1200 x 1200mm Acrylic on Canvas

£1500

Above: Breac (speckled)

1200 x 1200mm Acrylic on Canvas

£1500

Above: Ban (white - pale)

1500 x 1500mm Acrylic on Canvas

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Above: Dearg (red)

1500 x 1500mm Acrylic on Canvas

£1850

Above: Riabhach (brindled)

1500 x 1500mm Acrylic on Canvas

£1850

Spread over two rooms, the exhibition is comprised of fourteen paintings inspired by these Gaelic colour names and, whilst I am not a Gaelic speaker, the collection is a mark of gratitude to the sensibility of generations who crafted these identifying names and to the subsequent scholarship that preserved their significance.

The first room captures the perspective of a low-level walker, presenting distant outcrops and silhouettes on the horizon.

The second room takes the aspect of higher altitude walking, seeking to evoke the profound sense of awe of unfiltered magnificence, coupled with the physical demands, occasionally infused with a touch of apprehension.

Above: Ruadh (red brown)

1200 x 1200mm Acrylic on Canvas

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The exhibition Highland Colours is on at The Briggait, Glasgow

3rd - 27th October, 2023

Mon-Fri 9.30am 5.30pm.

Saturday 14th & Sunday 15th Oct 9.30am - 5.30pm.

Saturday 21st October 9.30am - 5.30pm.

Works to be purchased and collected from WASPS, alternatively, a cost for delivery can be arranged.

Contact WASPS - 0141 553 5890 (email info@waspsstudios.org.uk)

All purchasers will be gifted a signed copy of the hardback book commissioned specially for the exhibition.

City Art Gallery Perth - Taken for Granted

May 5, 2023 David Page

I am delighted to present an exhibition of landscape works, running from the 6th to the 31st of May 2023, in Tom Barron’s Perth Contemporary City Art Gallery, exploring the theme of ‘Taken for Granted’. These paintings draw inspiration and direction from Scotland’s uplands and the pressures they face. Through the use of scrapings, rubbings, smudgings, soakings, sprayings, sandings and spreadings, my aim is to capture the space between the raw immediacy underfoot and the resplendent distant silhouette against the sky.

As a former architect, having run my own practice (Page\Park Architects) in Glasgow, I have had the opportunity to witness the emergence of a reconciliation between the need to modernise city settings and the desire to conserve what was already there. This experience has taught me that we must carefully consider the impact of our actions on the landscapes we are acting on, especially as we face the pressing need to modernise our economy by "greening" it. We must strike a sensitive balance between achieving mutually beneficial green targets and conserving the natural green that already exists.

In light of this urgency, we must not take these landscapes for granted in our discussions. By using my art to highlight this issue, I hope to encourage others to pause and reflect on how we can create a more sustainable future while respecting the beauty and fragility of our environment.

Highland Art Prize

October 21, 2022 David Page

Delighted to hear today that my painting ‘Drift’, (submitted on behalf of the Mull Highland Games) has won the inaugural ‘Highland Art Prize’ held at the Royal National Mod in Perth this year and exhibited at the City Contemporary Art Gallery. The prize kindly received on my behalf by artist neighbour Angus Stewart, is part of a series of works based on the ‘Right to Roam’ legislation which has transformed responsible access in Scotland to the landscape around us. Sadly, to date, this remarkable policy initiative has found no traction in legislation in Northern Ireland, Wales or England.

From the website of the Hghland Art Prize.

The winning artwork was selected by Islay artist and BBC presenter Heather Dewar, and the prize was presented by Alex Ogilvie of the Highland Society of London at a well-attended prize-giving at the City Contemporary Art gallery in Perth today (Friday 21st October).

Heather Dewar the Describing her choice of winner, Heather explained: “There is enough in this painting to get lost in, to see new things each time one looks at it, so it more than passes the long-term test of still being fascinating years from now. I like the diversity of the marks, the contrast of light and dark, the subtle use of colour but most especially the slightly threatening feel to the whole work.”

Canvas Galleries Belfast

September 27, 2022 David Page

I am delighted that Canvas Galleries are showing my work in their beautiful new gallery on the Lisburn Road Belfast. It is a splendid setting for contemporary art spread over two large street facing floors.

My first pieces on display explore a cause dear to my heart, and that is the right of everyone to enjoy the landscape around us. When I look at a landscape painting, I don’t usually get the sense of that landscape being ‘owned’ in the same way as when I look at representations of a city. It is as if the openness of a landscape painting transcends all societal impact, allowing one to lose oneself in its delight, spirit and inspiration.

Landscapes are, of course, every bit as ‘owned’ as cities but what differs is public access to those pictorial realms. While cities have structured public access routes provided by streets and promenades, public access to our pictorial landscapes varies wildly. Whilst Scotland enjoys a legal ‘right to roam’ providing complete public access throughout her landscapes, the rest of the UK relies on Public Right Of Ways of which there are 140,000 miles in England and Wales, but only a paltry 123 miles in Northern Ireland.

It is these Forbidden Landscapes of Northern Ireland that I seek to capture in my intense abstract acrylics.

These paintings are constructed on the canvas, assembled by layering painterly marks, scratched and sandpapered surfaces, scraped and dissolved paint, granulated paint, sponged paint and drip marks.

Close up the intensity of the construction, like the bricks and blocks of a building, is visible and the textures are revealed. Standing back the landscape emerges and you can, like me, be within it.

Royal Ulster Academy of Arts 140th Exhibition

August 13, 2021 David Page

Delighted to say this piece has been selected for the annual exhibition from the 29th October 2021 at the Ulster Museum.

The ‘highlands’ of Northern Ireland ring and feed the saucer bowl of Lough Neagh. From rocky outcrops to heath and peat smothered slopes they have a dramatic and strange poignant quality being home to a wide variety of species and fauna, constantly in a flux of colour shifts as the seasons change.

But these upland landscapes are under ever greater threat as they are seen as the natural ‘acceptable’ place to locate wind turbines and mine for resources. This work tries to capture that raw beauty in a quiet protest to leave them alone.

Exhibition - Right to Roam

May 1, 2021 David Page

Thanks again to Julia and Mathew Reade at Calgary Art for giving me space to exhibit these latest paintings, inspired by the west coast and in particular Mull and its hills.

Right to Roam

Click to View Exhibition Catalogue

In the privations of lockdown I reflected a lot on the remarkable freedom of access we have to our hills and shores. Perhaps there was a yearning deep down there not to waste any time in the future in enjoying these politically hard won freedoms. The true value of that access to us all, whether resident or visitor, is hard to monetise unlike the more tangible currency of whisky or oil. Enshrined in law in 2003 by the Scottish Parliament, it allows comprehensive access in a responsible manner to that amazing Scottish landscape around our cities, towns and villages.

Originally I had thought it was, as in Norway, an ‘indigenous’ right, having grown up with stories of Glasgow shipyard workers in the 1930’s training and cycling their way out to the foot of the the ‘cobbler’ Ben Arthur above Arrochar on Loch Long. But no, perhaps landowners simply, and maybe wisely, tolerated their access and that of the many ‘Munro baggers’ that followed them, including myself.

The route to access becoming a ‘right’ was a long one. First mooted in 1890’s, maybe as a symbolic balm to the injustices of the previous centuries brutalities inflicted upon the local populations, the story goes that it was going to be forever thwarted by the land owning peers of the House of Lords. So we have to be thankful to the emergence of the Scottish Parliament for bypassing that obstacle in 2003.

Hence the Right to Roam, and for me the chance to leave the public road and absorb in its infinite variety where land and hill meet the shore and sky. To attempt to capture the play of light, the change in mood, the textural profusion, the tonal richness that comes for free. So reflecting back to the value of that right, ‘priceless’ comes to mind.