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.
