This has been a truly wonderful project, about which I was going to write, but as the recipient has written so beautifully about both the commission process and the finished piece, I’d much rather share his words here instead. 

In Hugh’s words: “The idea developed from conversations with Julia about her weaving. After sharing ideas back and forth we settled on a wall-hanging, which in some way might ‘echo’ the colours in my painting by Nael Hanna (‘Spring Meadow’) - bold, bright, characterful and definitely cheerful.

So. Julia had a commission to go ahead and create a woven wall-hanging based on her knowledge of me and my interests, and with that bright, strong colour palette. From that point Julia would work completely independently of me. The finished piece is extraordinary. From a first thought to make the flowers of the machair her sole subject, Julia ‘zoomed out’ to imagine herself out to sea and looking back to Tiree to create a unique representation of the island from east shoreline to west.

At a brief glance there is a sequence of complex, patterned coloured bands. Then…a realisation that there is more, a lot more detail. Subtle and delightful changes in colour in a multitude of different stitches and patterns lead the eye from apparent randomness into a detailed ‘picture’. From deep water to the shore, up over the dunes and across the machair and sliabh, the eye finally finds the Atlantic ocean and western skies. Thank you Julia”

~~~

“Lying just off-shore, looking down into deep indigo dark water, a swell lifts and lowers the kayak. Looking shoreward, a level water-horizon hides the immediate shore, distances judged against the backdrop of dunes. Moving forward on the next swell, the kayak accelerates, bow hanging over the wavefront, aerated, pale….and the wave breaks. The bow slides down in a race through white-blue tumbling surf.

The rush ends, bow slides as the water draws back leaving rows of miniature tide marks. Step out of the kayak and walk up the shore, bright, near-white sand fills in footsteps. It’s a scramble up the first dune of wind-heaped shore-sand, and into the first slack, darkening in its shelter. Marram and lyme grasses hold the next dune still, bound, colours olive.

On top of the highest dune the view opens: machair, early morning, early summer bloom, encompassing every colour of the palette. Further inland, colours fold together, woven into the sombre brown, russet and ochre of the sliabh. 

The convex profile of the island puts the far shore out of sight. A thin line of cloud marks distant land where Atlantic winds lift over Barra, Vatersay, Mingulay. Still, the far western sky hangs onto the deeper shades of early morning.

A joy to be alive.”