Space to breathe

and an unplanned pause

Aug 06, 2025

Dear friends

Not for the first time, I find myself becalmed by a storm.

I’m in Edinburgh, waiting out Storm Floris as she thunders through Scotland today, unable to reach my home in Orkney.

Which means, dear Life Rafters, that we will have to miss our regular Wednesday co-working session again this week, as I will still be en route to Orkney!

I ventured out to the shops earlier. Although still warm and sunny, the wind was already building. The city trees, in full summer leaf, were flailing wildly. Their leaves made a sound like the sea, and made me think of home, where the wind is already much stronger than here. I crossed the street to avoid a split branch that swung ominously over my head and thought how Orkney’s openness and relative lack of trees actually makes a big wind like this less alarming. There’s not so much to blow over, or down. The wind has room to move, space to breathe.

I have an unexpected space to catch my breath too, after a very busy and focussed few months in the studio.

Storm Floris has imposed a pause on my journey home from speaking at Making Waves – Breaking Ground, an exhibition beautifully put together by curator Sophie Camu and photographer Alexander Lindsay in association with Purdey Hicks Gallery in London. I’m one of the 11 artists included. In what has become an annual event dubbed “Space to Breathe”, Sophie and Alex transform the barn-sized space of Bowhouse in Fife, from its more usual use as a food market, into an extraordinary art space by suspending the artwork from the roof girders on lengths of wire, so they float above the wide expanse of polished concrete floor.

It’s quite a remarkable feat of installation.

‘Moon Glow over the Sea’ in Making Waves - Breaking Ground. photo: Alexander Lindsay

To see my paintings hovering in space instead of anchored to a wall, with so much room to move and breathe, brought a whole new reading to them. They’ve become more cloud-like, more ethereal, more foggy, more weightless. It made me want to work even bigger, to make paintings you could really get lost in, that you could float away with.

‘Wave Cloud Breath’, ‘Salt Fog Light’ and ‘Sun Cloud’ in Making Waves - Breaking Ground Photo: Alexander Lindsay

Moving around the space sets up new visual conversations between paintings too, as perspectives shift and artworks slide in and out of sight behind each other.

‘Haar’ and ‘This Salted Light’ in Making Waves - Breaking Ground Photo: Alexander Lindsay

The place was busy with visitors over the weekend and it was a real pleasure to chat with so many lovely and interesting people, many of whom had some connection to, or recollection of Orkney.

‘Islands’, ‘Crossing’, ‘Still Pool with Cloud Reflected’ and ‘The Sea is Not Made of Water’ in Making Waves - Breaking Ground, photo: Alexander Lindsay

A four star review in The Scotsman was cause for celebration too.

Remarkably, Sophie and Alexander are completely de-installing the whole exhibition from August 6th to make way for the regular market, and then putting the whole thing back up again for August 16th, when it will remain open until 31st. If you can’t make it along in person you can view the whole exhibition catalogue HERE.

And now, unexpectedly, I find myself with a couple of extra days in Edinburgh just as the Edinburgh Art Festival gets under way. So, once the storm has blown through, I’ll have a chance to take in some of the many great exhibitions and shows currently on in this old hometown of mine, as well as catch up with pals.

I am itching to get back into the studio, though, once I get home again. I left a large painting for my next show to dry. It will be ready to work over with the next layers by the time I get back.

In this new piece I’ve been experimenting with washes of different viscosities, setting layers over layers, allowing them to flow and evaporate so they start to resemble pictures of the Earth from space, or like the powerful Atlantic weather system that’s currently grounding me.