|
12 March, 2010
 |
Published: 05 November, 2009
ANN Davidson, who grew up in Dornoch, Tongue and, mostly, Helmsdale in the 1950s and 1960s, is presenting an exhibition "North from Sutherland" at Timespan in Helmsdale from now until December 20. She tells us: "I have travelled to Iceland and Greenland to see if they are like what I call 'Sutherland, exaggerated'. My collection of work, which is paintings-in-sections and which took me ten years, represents all three places. "The Sutherland of my youth seems to me like another world; it was and felt truly remote. "Indeed, all the roads in this vast county other than the only trunk road were single track. "Many bridges that we now take for granted had not been built. It felt like a great, pristine, undiscovered land. "And, by and large, it was. "When I went to art school I painted Sutherland landscapes because I wanted to communicate their extreme remoteness, drama and purity. "I was enthralled by Suilven which I drew 100 times. "My thesis was on life in Sutherland. There were no popular books then especially about the county so after college I came home to write one, which resulted only in a pile of journals. However, by this time I knew I would always paint Sutherland.
"For a long time I wondered what was beyond Sutherland. I wanted to visit lands that were more remote, more elemental and more sparsely populated: Sutherland, exaggerated. "In 2002 I visited Iceland and, in 2005, Greenland. "I found that much of Iceland is indeed similar to Sutherland, with its inselbergs and odd shapes rising out of low land and the lack of tall vegetation to obscure vistas of those masses. "The vegetation, mostly, looks just like that of the Scottish Highlands and there are fjords similar to our sea lochs. "What I saw of Greenland, however, looked exactly like the cnoc and lochan areas of west Sutherland: a giant version of Assynt, with ice added. Perhaps this is unsurprising as Scotland and Greenland were once joined. "I feel that, because of modern developments and global warming, my work has a retrospective angle. "Much of Sutherland has lost its pristine look; glaciers in Iceland have been receding; ice in Greenland has been melting." 
|
 WHAT'S ON
THE BIG VOTE
Is too much money being spent on Gaelic education in the Highlands? Local Guides
|
