Last week, the sun was shining in Scotland, and everyone seemed to be out enjoying it. I took full advantage, spending three days painting in the landscape at Limefield House, a Georgian mansion near West Calder.

In October, I was commissioned by Limefield House to create work about the ancient yew trees on the property—some more than 1,000 years old. They grow in a strange promenade (no one is quite sure why), winding through other striking trees like Monkey Puzzle and Canadian Redwood. The commission is wonderfully open—simply to make paintings—which has felt like a dream come true.

Over the past few months, I’ve approached the project from several angles. I’ve researched the folkloric significance of yews and explored painting ideas in the studio. But from the beginning, I knew I wanted to work on location as soon as the weather allowed. I wanted to experience the beauty and mystery of these trees firsthand and carry that into the paintings.

I had already tried working at Limefield in March, on a day with 27 mph winds. In those conditions, a large canvas on an easel acts like a sail. More than once in my career, I’ve watched a painting cartwheel across a field—even in much lighter winds!

So when I saw that this week would finally bring warm, stable spring weather, I headed straight back to Limefield. It was everything I hoped for—three glorious days of sunshine and calm. Apart from the midges (who seem to adore me), it was the perfect experience.

My upcoming RSA residency – painting in the landscape of Lewis

Also this week, I’ve been re-editing my artist’s statement—something most artists dread, myself included! While the goal was to refresh the copy for my website, it also became a chance to reflect deeply and clarify the direction of my work. This process comes at the perfect time, as I prepare for my upcoming RSA residency on the Isle of Lewis, which begins on May 11th.

For this project, I’ll be exploring the overlap between personal and collective memory. My focus will be a croft house near Stornoway and the surrounding landscape north of Tolsta, along the island’s east coast. I’ll be painting on location in the landscape and experimenting with contemporary methods both outdoors and inside the house.

While working under the trees at Limefield this week, it felt like the right moment to consider the different strands of my practice—how both studio-based and landscape painting have evolved over the years. My thoughts traced all the way back to the beginning, to my early days growing up in Ohio.

Learning how to be an artist

Young Artists: my studio at Bennington College

with poet Sheila Black

On safari in Tanzania, 2007, moments later the monkey stole my paper towels.

In Tuscany 2005

I started painting in the landscape as a teenager in Cleveland, Ohio. In the 1970s, I attended Saturday classes at the Cleveland Institute of Art, where we were taught to paint from observation—mostly using live models. But when the weather was good, we were sent outside to study the landscape.

As a young student at Bennington College in Vermont, I encountered a shift in teaching. The school was moving away from traditional technique and leaning toward more conceptual approaches. During that time, I completed a short internship with New York artist Nell Blaine, who had a deep love for painting the landscape.

A protégé of Hans Hofmann, Nell moved in a prestigious circle of New York artists and poets in the 1940s and ’50s. Her community included John Ashbery, Frank O’Hara, Willem de Kooning, Kenneth Koch, Lee Krasner, Jane Freilicher and Robert DeNiro Sr. She was also a founding member of the Jane Street Gallery—the first artists’ cooperative in New York.

Nell began her career as a realist. Her style evolved into abstraction, inspired by Piet Mondrian, Fernand Léger, and Jean Hélion. In the 1950s, her abstract expressionist work gained significant acclaim, with critics like Clement Greenberg praising her achievements.

An artist’s hardship and resilience

Everything changed tragically in 1959 when Nell contracted polio during a trip to Greece. After eight months in hospital, confined to an iron lung, she was told she would never paint again. Amazingly, through extended physical therapy, she regained the use of her hands—though she used a wheelchair for the rest of her life.

When I met Nell in 1980, she was working from a studio in the small Riverside Drive apartment she shared with her partner, Carolyn Harris. Her style had shifted dramatically from her Abstract Expressionist beginnings to landscapes—beautiful explorations of color and the interplay of light and shadow. Her subjects, shaped by the constraints of her New York life, often included the Hudson River (seen from her apartment window), vases of flowers, still lifes, interiors, or her garden in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Her work embraced nature and the beauty of everyday moments.

Daring to be unfashionable

Nell’s move away from abstraction toward landscape painting was unfashionable at the time. Some New York critics openly dismissed her. Still, Nell was part of a group of highly respected women artists who were finally gaining the recognition they deserved. In 1979, Eleanor Munro published Originals: American Women Artists. Nell was interviewed alongside Louise Bourgeois, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Alice Neel.

While I was on my internship, Nell invited me to a reception for the book at her Madison Avenue gallery. Unbelievably, she couldn’t attend—the lift was broken. With no mobile phones back then, I didn’t know why she hadn’t shown up. I’ll admit, I felt a bit sorry for myself, insecure and smoking in a corner. Eventually, I pulled myself together. In the end the night was fantastic. Artist Alice Neel held court in the middle of the gallery, and later I ended up downtown having an interesting time with one of Louise Bourgeois’ assistants. But that’s another story!

Good advice from an older artist

In my short time with Nell, I learned a great deal about listening, observing, and paying attention to the needs of others. She was direct about what she needed as a disabled person—“for god’s sake, don’t sit next to someone who’s coughing on the subway!”—but just as forceful when it came to being an artist. “Don’t be tricky” was one of her mantras.

What stayed with me most was her resilience and unwavering commitment. Nell often worked through the night, when New York was finally quiet, then slept through the day. She wasn’t afraid to make creative decisions that ran against the trends of the time.

Despite the many hardships she faced, she remained entirely herself. and her art reflected this.

“The artist needs a permissive atmosphere. I am not involved in impressionism, and I have turned from my former total abstract presentation. Mine are action paintings. I want to be surprised by what I am doing. An artist must be his own leader, no matter what direction he takes.”

Nell Blaine, artist

Searching for a room of one’s own

Portrait of the artist c. 1981

Richard Diebenkorn's note to himself about landscape painting

Georgia O'Keefe painting in her model A Ford in New Mexico

Painting in the landscape continued to influence me while I completed my degree at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, where painter Neil Welliver was a major figure. After graduating, I moved to Berkeley, California. Inspired by artists Richard Diebenkorn, and Georgia O’Keeffe (with her mobile studio in a Model A Ford), I began taking trips into the stunning Northern California landscape to paint. At the same time, I supported myself with a waitressing job.

Later, I returned to New York City, and eventually moved to Edinburgh. There, studio space was prohibitively expensive, so I worked outdoors out of necessity. For a long time, I saw this as a disadvantage. But the upside was working in the incredible places I have visited over the years —France, Italy, Scotland, Spain, Sweden, Tanzania, the USA, and Vietnam.

Even so, painting in the open air, especially in the Scottish climate, has its limits. I came to understand how important it was to let work ‘germinate’—to have room for experimentation, to explore new materials and methods, and to reflect in a quiet, comfortable space.

In 2008, I was finally able to rent a studio in Edinburgh. My practice expanded rapidly. A dedicated workspace changed everything for me. It gave me the independence, ambition, and focus I had long been seeking. (Thank you, Virginia Woolf and Internet Archive.)

Painting in the landscape gives memory a visual form

So what does all this mean for my practice—and that elusive artist’s statement? Growing up in Ohio, moving across the U.S. multiple times, living through the chaos of 1980s New York City, and finally settling in Scotland in the 1990s have all shaped how I work.

I’ve had a dedicated studio for 17 years, but working outdoors remains central to my practice. Painting in the landscape continues to excite me. It brings an energy to my work that I can’t find anywhere else.

In essence my work is about giving memory a visual and physical form. I am interested in narratives of transformation and displacement how they are mirrored in personal memory and collective experience and expressed through the process of painting. Myth, story, memory – the stories we tell ourselves – are matter to be transformed. The materials I use, the places where I work (often outdoors) are an essential part of this approach.

The imagined landscapes of my paintings in the studio are created through a deep understanding of real landscape, obtained through working outdoors. Often remote or abandoned, these resonant places contain hidden and unfolding histories which reflect my own life experiences. Painting in these places (or drawing or making video) works like an embodied memory. Walking to my destination, working in the light and movement of nature becomes a meditation on being present in time. I am in a contemplative place of action and response where thinking stops. Paint in itself resonates with transformative possibilities; texture, gesture, colour, layered over time, echo the ancient pursuit of transforming base material into something beautiful and enduring