Northwest Highlands and Hebrides Series
Marks and Traces VII,

acrylic on canvas,
61cm x 91cm (each panel),
Iain White
£280 per canvas, £730 the triptych

These works are an attempt to apply a symbolic language to the landscape pattern of runrig cultivation, particularly as encountered in the Hebrides.

This pattern is very reminiscent of some Australian aboriginal art and in the similar way it conveys a narrative and a mythology of a people. Like the aborigines, the Gaelic speaking pre-clearance communities became a people outside, a people excluded and marginalised in the face of a 'colonising' power. Unlike the aborigines whose spiritual narrative is written in marks and symbols in their art, the record of these communities is written in the surface of the land itself. It is this pattern that is the testimony to their toil and sacrifice in a demanding environment.

So, the reality of runrig is stylised as a symbolic language of marks similar to those found in aboriginal art. The motifs in the central panel are derived from diagrams of Iron Age wheelhouses.

Marks and Traces VII,

acrylic on canvas,
61cm x 91cm (each panel),
Iain White
£280 per canvas, £730 the triptych

These works are an attempt to apply a symbolic language to the landscape pattern of runrig cultivation, particularly as encountered in the Hebrides.

This pattern is very reminiscent of some Australian aboriginal art and in the similar way it conveys a narrative and a mythology of a people. Like the aborigines, the Gaelic speaking pre-clearance communities became a people outside, a people excluded and marginalised in the face of a 'colonising' power. Unlike the aborigines whose spiritual narrative is written in marks and symbols in their art, the record of these communities is written in the surface of the land itself. It is this pattern that is the testimony to their toil and sacrifice in a demanding environment.

So, the reality of runrig is stylised as a symbolic language of marks similar to those found in aboriginal art. The motifs in the central panel are derived from diagrams of Iron Age wheelhouses.