Arran in Stormy Weather Mixed Media

Arran in Stormy Weather

This painting is professionally framed and ready to hang.

I took the small canvas onto a beach on the lower Clyde coast across from Arran (close to Skelmorlie as I remember). I had just been given a stern talking to by a woman who I guess must have been local to the area. She was complaining about where I had parked the car. (She has my sympathies and I found somewhere else to park. If you live in such an idyll it must be frustrating to have to endure the nuisance of artists coming onto your beach to paint seascapes.) It was afternoon with fading light and it was windy but with intermittent freezing rain. I wanted to be close to the water so that I could look at how waves break as they get close to land and the tide was out at the time so I had to walk quite a distance onto the wet sand close to the water’s edge - which is where I painted this picture of the island of Arran in the storm.

When I paint outdoors I mostly use acrylics for the practical reason that they dry quickly so that your work won’t be destroyed if it comes into contact with anything when you are packing up or if the rain comes on. So I did that and, again as usual, worked on it back home but on this occasion with oil paint. As I was doing this the very dark image with the moments of light began to appear and within a very short time during one sitting I had this painting. The subject matter and mood of it have always reminded me of the early chapters of Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel ‘Kidnapped’ for some reason.