The Call of the Isles
I've cherished the proximity to local people and the intimacy of sharing moments at their crofts, fanks and loom-sheds. Yet there’s also the feeling of being far from society, with only the beauty of island geographies for company. I’ve found hope and inspiration throughout.
These islands hold the grandest of all storytelling, with tales hidden beneath each and every stone. Given time and attention, such secrets unravel like old remnants of heather rope, enclosing the heart like croft-land; bound by bent post and long forgotten boundaries.
My own story is a slow, meditative experience of these revelations, wholly appropriate to the rhythm of this special place. I have long been immersed in it, lost in the faces of the inhabitants and the character of their precious land. While I work here, my pictures always seek to capture the delicate balance between nature's light and dark, the challenges of life lived in the remote and rural, and the rare glimpses which always reward if one's patience can endure. The longer I spend here, the more the islands come to impose upon my own psyche and soul. I find myself unburdened, old emotional tethers falling away, bringing an increasing sense of lightness to my being with every visit.
My Hebridean work, which first began fifteen years ago, now continues as I set out upon these new headings. Camera in hand, there is a deep drive to discover whatever may lie over the next hill and far horizon. Onwards the journey goes, and always with that inescapable sense of freedom only time spent in the Outer Hebrides can bring.
That is the feeling which has inspired the creation of this updated collection. Since the release of my first book ‘From The Land’ in 2013, the islands continue to reveal themselves in ways I never expect. So my story too continues to evolve, as I look at life there in an ever-changing light. Like nature, everything is always in flux but the essential endures.
This then is another step on the road I first began walking all those years ago, a beautiful path always leading home to the Outer Hebrides. No matter where I am in the world, my heart is irrevocably tied like a weaver's knot to this place, my soul forever drawn by the siren calls of unseen sea-birds.
