oil on canvas,
80cm x 60cm,
Iain White 2016,
£260
Extensive peatlands have formed in areas where there is a climate of high rainfall and a low level of evapotranspiration, allowing peat to develop over large expanses of undulating ground. It is this blanketing of the ground with a variable depth of peat that gives the habitat type its name. Waterbodies account for a high proportion of the bog surface and range in size from pools to medium-sized lochans. These are found on the blanket bogs formed over most of the flat gneiss terrain and on the terraces alongside the River Dionard.
It is this, often concentric, pattern of pools and furrows that provides the inspiration for this work which seeks to abstract this pattern as it would appear on a map of the bog surface.
The blanket mire or bog habitats on the lower slopes of Foinne Bheinn (Foinaven) and adjacent peaks and covering the lower ground in Strath Dionard are a western outlier of the extensive Caithness and Sutherland peatlands in northern Scotland, the scale and diversity of which make them unique in Europe. They form the largest peat mass in the UK and are three times larger than any other peatland area in either Britain or Ireland.
Ref: 52
