Summary

2021 Abandoned Cottages, Scotland In 2021 I was supported through a Creative Scotland grant for individual artists to do a month long residency at Merz Gallery at Sanquhar in Southwest Scotland. For a week, during the residency I worked at a terrace of abandoned farm cottages experimenting with painting, collage and time lapse video. The building itself became material for work and I created a series of temporary paintings on the windows.

Description

In April 2021, right after lockdown, it was incredible to leave Edinburgh for the first time in over a year and go on residency in rural Dumfriesshire. The terrace of abandoned cottages located on a hill outside Sanquhar, Dumfriesshire was atmospheric, unsettling, electric. Beyond the notice of most people, they had stood empty since the 90’s and had begun to merge with nature. Animals lived and died inside the cottages, the winds moved through like a tide, stirring all the stuff that had lain there for years. It was incredibly freeing to make temporary work on the windows, to sketch impressions from found materials, to make more completed paintings, some in situ and some back in my studio. I always intended to go back and do more work at the cottages but I never did. I found out recently the buildings are being renovated – it’s good that this place will be a home again.

When I finished working here in April 2021, I made sure to leave no trace, but this place, that now exists only in my memory, has embedded itself in me.