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Deora tairteoil / Dried up tears. Triptych - Oil on panel (outer panels); Lead wax, tibetan cherry leaves (central panel) ; 30 x 71 cm; © 2019 Greag Mac a’ tSaoir, all rights reserved.

This painting represents a subtle shift in my thinking. The recent plant paintings have been portraits.  They represent specific plants, not generic types, and they are painted after the plant has been somehow damaged, after it has had its vulnerability cast into relief.  The portrait is an act of homage, it acknowledges that the sitter commands our respect, or our love.  The double portrait here is slightly ironic and nods towards Holbein’s double portraits for Henry VIII.  This is the first work to combine that motif with the funerary elements in the central panel.  The leaves are first dipped in wax to preserve them, then encased in it and shrouded in lead, like the liner of a coffin. 

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An bás marbh / Death dead. Oil on panel; 50 x 50 cm; © 2019 Greag Mac a’ tSaoir, all rights reserved.

Another dead crow from the garden. I was tempted to call this Icarus, although it was clearly the cat (or possibly the fox) that it flew too close too, rather than the sun.  I scooped this up of a piece of plywood and brought it into the studio where it continued to fall apart, its decomposition unstoppable now.  I’ll return it to the ground. Death decays and breaks down, fuelling new life - Death dead - the unbroken circle.

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Préachán marbh / dead crow; oil on panel; 50 x 50 cm; © 2019 Greag Mac a’ tSaoir, all rights reserved.

I came across this half decomposed crow that had been hung up as a warning to its companions.  Crows are such wonderfully graphic things, like a rorschach blot brought to life and the way the mechanics of the wing had become exposed was more graphic again.

You can never quite escape symbolism with a crow and for me this works as a memento mori as well as on a more literal level

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Climbing Rose; oil on panel; 40 x 40 cm; © 2019 Greag Mac a’ tSaoir, all rights reserved

This climbing rose is from our own garden here and during the recent storms a large section of it blew down, no mean feat given that the climbing rose winds its way though other trees and bushes like a true invader.

As the leaves curl and dry they become very graphic and this painting reminds me of the painting in Ladybird children’s books that were my first visual primer

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Oak Leaves; oil on panel; 20 x 20 cm; © 2019 Greag Mac a’ tSaoir, all rights reserved

More windblown broken branches, a fragment in this case, from the grounds of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art.

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Chestnut; oil on panel; 40 x 40; © 2019 Greag Mac a’ tSaoir, all rights reserved

I found this broken off chestnut branch in the grounds of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. The trees there were planted to the design of landscape artist David Nash, a mix of oak, sycamore and chestnut, and actually form part of the gallery’s collection.

I work on gesso-ed panel, made the traditional way with rabbit skin glue, plaster and marble dust and although it’s time consuming it’s worth it when you sand the surface back and it takes on a papery quality, which is very evident in this painting which I think looks almost like a watercolour.

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Seven-legged crab; oil on panel; 20 x 20cm; © 2019 Greag Mac a’ tSaoir, all rights reserved. Private collection

Quick oil sketch of an almost complete crab shell my partner brought back from the shores of Fife

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Diseased branch; oil on panel; 40 x 40cm; © 2019 Greag Mac a’ tSaoir, all rights reserved.

This was the first of a recent series of paintings that looks at trees and plants with the notion of making a ‘portrait’.  We make portraits to respect and to commemorate. I’m particularly interested in the no frills portrait style of early renaissance painters.

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Coillte marbh / The dead forest.  Oil on panel.  Diptych. Each panel 31 x 31 cm. © 2019 Greag Mac a’ tSaoir, all rights reserved

Up until a few years ago Sliabh gCuilinn, in South Armagh, was crowned with a thick swathe of midnight dark larch forest but the trees were struck by disease, a variant of ash dieback and the forest was cut down leaving an ugly scar across the mountain.  One of these two painting will survive, the other, like the trees on Sliabh gCuilinn will be hacked down and burned.

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Flooding, Meiklebridge, oil on panel. Diptych, each panel 60 x 40 cm. © 2019 Greag Mac a’ tSaoir, all rights reserved

One of a continuing series of diptychs in which one half will be erased, burnt or otherwise destroyed.  We erase, burn and otherwise destroy the environment we live in on a daily basis, this is a form of restitution.

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Playing with fire, literally.  This was a trial burning for some new works about landscape and how we’re managing to destroy it

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Edinburgh Park, an noimead roimh an breacadh an lae / Edinburgh Park, Just before Dawn; Oil and ink on panel; 41 x 81 cm; © 2019 Greag Mac a’ tSaoir, all rights reserved

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Beirt súile gloine / Two glass eyes; Oil and ink on panel; 20 x 23 cm; © 2019 Greag Mac a’ tSaoir, all rights reserved

I bought a pair of glass eyes on eBay.  I have an idea for making an automaton using them.  If it works out I’ll post it here.  This is a quick oil sketch of them.  They were apparently made for life size dolls, in case you’re wondering.  I have to confess I was puzzled as to why anyone would need two glass eyes.

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No Bulbs; Oil and ink on cotton, laid down on board; 60 x 60 cm; © 2019 Greag Mac a’ tSaoir, all rights reserved

Nathan Coley’s installation in the grounds of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art carries three lines of lit up text ‘There Will Be No Miracles Here’. My version mashes this up with the Fall lyrics ‘There Are No Bulbs In This Flat’.  Across the road in Edinburgh Martin Creed’s neon claims ‘Everything Is Going To Be Alright. With a car crash Brexit in the sights I fear the lights have gone out.

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Containers, Falkirk, chimneys, Grangemouth; Oil and ink on panel; 45 x 45 cm; © 2019 Greag Mac a’ tSaoir, all rights reserved

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Stirling Castle, Evening, Winter; Oil and ink on panel; 30 x 30cm; © 2019 Greag Mac a’ tSaoir, all rights reserved

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Peony seeds; oil on panel; 21 x 23cm; © 2019 Greag Mac a’ tSaoir, all rights reserved

The light hasn’t really returned with the kind of vigour I need for landscape painting but I’m itching to paint so while I’ve been planning some landscape work I knocked out this little oil sketch of a peony seed pod I’ve been keeping on the window sill to remind myself that there is life and it will return with the spring