After four months of lockdown things are just starting to get moving again. As an artist, it has been particularly difficult not being able to travel to experience culture, landscapes and to research the subject matter needed to develop new works.

To try to help with this, I’m going to take a look back into the sketchbooks and create a series of virtual journeys to some of the places that have had a significant affect on my work as an artist.

For the first one, I’ve been looking back to a recent trip I made to the Hebridean islands of North and South Uist, and Benbecula. I have spent the last twenty-five years traveling around the Scottish islands, and I am still as excited planning a new visit as I was my first time.

This trip tied in with an exhibition of the drawings and poems from Birdfall, my collaboration with my friend Donald S Murray, and our talk as part of the Uist Book Festival and Scottish Book Week.

One advantage to the traveller visiting the Uists is that you can travel between four islands, North Uist, Grimsay, Benbecula and South Uist by a series of wonderful causeways. 

As an artist, the Scottish islands are a wealth of fantastic material and ideas to get the imagination and sketchbooks working, and the Uists do not disappoint. From superb land and seascapes, to incredible wildlife experiences, there is so much to sketch and photograph and take back to the studio. 

One evening walk, north along the road from Clachan, on the west side of North Uist produced some fantastic views of the island’s spectacular raptors. The first encounter was with a pair of Golden Eagles, seen first perched on top of a small hill creating a pair of strange silhouettes on the skyline. It wasn’t until they took to the air that the effect of their presences was really witnessed. As the flew over the machair, thousands of other birds took to the air in alarm. From geese and ducks to waders and other seabirds, the sky was filled with the worried calls of the resident population, while the eagles flew along languidly as if they too were just out for an evening stroll, oblivious to the chaos ensuing all around them!

Further up the road, it was the behaviour and alarm calls of Redshanks and Lapwings that alerted me to the presence of another bird of prey (there are no foxes on the islands, so alarms usually mean a passing raptor). Scanning the hillside to see what was causing the commotion, I came across an adult White-tailed Eagle, perched on top of a rock and paying no attention to the attentions for the divebombing waders, now joined by Oystercatchers.

On the return journey, I saw what is one of my favourite birds of prey, and a real speciality of the islands, the Hen Harrier. The first was a female, or Ringtail, flying over the machair towards the hills, followed closely by the beautiful grey male quartering slowly over the fields and shore edges. Interesting to observe that these fairly large birds of prey caused very little disturbance to the local bird population, being mobbed only by Meadow Pipits, Twites and Wheatears.

Sitting here in the isolation of the studio, I can look over the sketchbooks and notes from the trips, with fantastic visual memories of our wonderful islands.