“There are hills beyond Pentland and lands beyond Forth”

This line from The Bonnets of Bonnie Dundee by Sir Walter Scott was to spark not only a painting collection and a film, but a new way of looking at the world.

Filmed in and around Edinburgh, Scotland, between January 2021 and February 2022, Lands Beyond is a collaboration with Alba Media to document my life as an artist living and working in Edinburgh during and emerging from a global pandemic.

As my work explores the various landscapes we frequent and our relationships to them and how this changes from day to day, through the seasons and over the years, how would my art practice be impacted due to restrictions on movement (at the height of the pandemic, we could only travel no more than a few miles from our homes)? Not only from a practical point of supply issues but the art itself - the colour choices I make (are they really mine to make?) and the nature and composition of my paintings?

And in feeling these restrictions, I wonder if we can let go and release old notions of landscapes beyond those that we experience in the physical realm.