COLL VIEW

HA HA yes Donald...a beauty !!! - And if you can upload this as maritime then I might just upload those Castle Urquart on Loch Ness and Eilean Donan on Loch Duich  :whistle: :whistle: :whistle: :whistle: :whistle:

And why not, Debra?  Both sit on beautiful shorelines - I can see the glitter on Loch Ness as I think of Urquhart Castle, and it remains a very important waterway.  Eilean Donan reminds me of moments when, on business journeys to and from Skye, I would pull the car into a lay-by, chew a sandwich, and look and look and look at the beauty all around me.  Yes, indeed, Loch Duich...turntable car-ferries, fishing-boats, castles....all part of the experience, part of the definition of 'maritime' in Scotland.  As for 'Coll View', I'm glad you liked it.  I wanted to put it here because that is where 'it all began' for me, and where things still begin...drawings and paintings are produced there, model boats (e.g. the 'Claymore' on my other gallery), and so on.  More importantly, it marks me out as a long-rooted 'native' of the island, who is a Gaelic speaker, and also a 'splasher' ('artist' being the up-market word, of course).  In Tiree, as elsewhere in the Hebrides, we have many 'artists', nearly all of whom have arrived from elsewhere and have 'discovered' what some of us always knew (or part of it, anyway).  They all come with plenty of baggage, different approaches, theories, bees in bonnets...and their art reflects all of that.  It ranges from the beautiful to the frankly insipid, from the modernistically theoretical, cubic, abstract to the 'mountain out of a molehill' feat of ingenuity,  producing the ungainly boulder from the shapely pebble.  But what are the 'natives'' takes on their own locations?  Well...there are very few known to me who do art in any official way, and they don't have fancy art businesses, preferring to be in the background....but they are often the finest artists of all, having built splendid boats, houses, furniture etc., and quite a few have been outstanding with the wee paint-brush, the scraper on the board, the pencil on the paper - and who greater than my fellow native of Tiree, Alasdair MacFarlane from Balemartin, in my view the finest marine artist of all time?  I am not in his league, but I am a native islander - and proud of it.  And I do like 'splashing' out my feelings in paint etc.  

A wonderful description of your native origins Donald.
Your additional comments to your gallery contributions are of tremendous value to this site.
One can amost see the   (painting / drawing / photo)  by the written comments before the actual viewing.
I enjoy the very respectful feedback between "Debra" and yourself and many other contributers.
Keep up the great work Donald.

Collach.

Thanks so much, Robert, for your very kind and encouraging comments - as always.  Glad the descriptions enhance understanding.  I feel that there is a 'slice' of me, or of my experience, in every painting.  It is not just a neutral ship - or whatever - to me.  I've been there, seen it, and/or felt it.  My 'splashing' is one of my ways of expressing how I feel about the islands, the boats etc., and a little bit of intro. helps folk to comprehend the emotions behind the paint.  I enjoy the chats with other members of the website - a new community of friends, who alleviate the loneliness and individuality of each attempt, and make me feel that there may be more to it than my own peculiarity.  Over the years, I 'splashed' and drew just to please myself, and hardly anyone saw what I produced.  Now the web can find me that circle of interested people across the globe.  What a difference it makes!   All the very best, Donald.