Polly take two

Here's my latest completed oil on canvas painting: Stac Pollaidh ('Polly') 70 x 70 cms square. It's my second painting to feature this mountain, the first being a pastel executed some years ago.





Stac Pollaidh is the far mountain, not the closer one on the right. Some thirty kms north of Ullapool, it's not a particularly high Scottish mountain, nevertheless an iconic one for serious hill walkers - rather than mountaineers.




I particularly liked the Autumnal colours and the remains of an old gate and fence. Usually I keep all signs of man-made artifacts out of my Highlands landscapes. Yes, I know they are thought 'necessary' but for me they spoil the wilderness. (Not sure I like that much used word. 'Wilderness' sounds too much like 'useless'.) But good to see such artificial restrictions in process of being repossessed by mother nature! A reminder that what we see was here long before us and will be here long after we have gone. My little verse ...













Here is a mountain,
unchanging, saw toothed,

reaching for an always changing Assynt sky;

a distant dare to
those who would endure,

or may enjoy the
hardships of this ‘wilderness’




She rises from her
rain-soaked moorland bed

by day a curve of
greens, rock-greys; by night

black bitch-face
howling at the yellow moon:

carved by that last
great icy age, it’s said

that scraped north Scotland
down to lesser height

skyline dancing jagged
to some piper's tune




From Polly’s crest
you’ll see the silver sea

across whose puny
waves lie Hebrides:

look down upon those
many shining lochs
breathe purest air where all things rest in peace.