Title

Shaped by the Wind

Shaped by the Wind

Oil and Paper 2025. 

210 × 297 mm

This painting is part of a series I made back on the Isle of Man, returning to drawing and painting after a long period of illness. The landscapes are the ones I grew up in: wild, wind-shaped trees, open highlands, Celtic stones, and the colours of the island that stay with me no matter where I go.

I painted outdoors and finished the works indoors, trying to capture the ghostly, windswept feeling of these highlands.  Places where I used to forage plants for dyeing my textiles. Cronk ny Arrey Laa, with its ancient cairn, was a particular inspiration. I am drawn to its bleak, open space and the sense of movement within the landscape.

When a curator asked me from the Bethlem Gallery, why there was so much movement in the works, I didn’t really understand it at the time. Looking back, I think I was drawn to spaces that were exposed, windblown and open because I was trying to capture the wind itself, something unseen, but deeply felt.

I now recognise that this movement was also connected to my experience of invisible disability. During the most severe period of my illness, I was unable to leave my bed and certainly unable to make work. Returning to painting became a way of reconnecting with the landscape and with myself, but the work also became a kind of ghostly reflection of that experience: a memory of something I had lived through, expressed indirectly through movement, atmosphere and the landscape.

In that sense, the wind in these paintings is both physical and metaphorical, something that cannot be seen, but whose presence can be felt.

20% of the proceeds will be donated to Bethlem Gallery. These artworks were developed in collaboration with the gallery for the exhibition, This Wild Achingly Beautiful Place.