An Introduction to Liz Myhill.
Quite often I am asked if I have a favourite place to draw and paint, or where I have found most inspiring in my life as an artist. Having travelled, lived and worked in a variety of diverse places including India, Cuba and Patagonia, it often seems to provoke surprise when I reply that Waternish and its subtle charms continue to fascinate and inspire me.
Toward the Minch
Having lived all of my early years here until leaving for art college I feel rooted to this small peninsula where there are so many memories and connections. It’s a place that I feel invites a slow and gentle appreciation. And what I love doing is to embed myself deeply in the landscape by patient observation and time spent outside surrounded by the natural world.
Almost all of my work is completed entirely outside on location, where I can not only see but hear, feel, smell, touch and even sometimes taste my subject matter. It might be the feeling of a shift in the wind, textures of soft frilly seaweeds against rough barnacles, the sudden deluge that transforms a view or the call of a cuckoo that alerts me to tiny dramas playing out. I can spend hours gazing into a rockpool or watching the ever-changing light across the bay.
January Storms
It’s a connection that I sense so many of us yearn for, the connection to land and nature that was once commonplace in human life. And a slower pace, the freedom to be idle and enjoy just being, with no other objectives, just to savour the pleasure of it. In many ways drawing and painting is an excuse to do more of that, it gives some degree of purpose to my days but it also allows me to spend so many of them being inspired by nature and filled with its small joys.
The Colour of Spring
Making drawings and paintings outside isn’t always easy, the weather can be brutal, there is constant change, the wildlife may come and go. But just the fact of being outside absorbing it all makes it endlessly fascinating and fulfilling. I’m always curious about my surroundings and often amazed or delighted by small discoveries. It might be watching a hermit crab tentatively slip out of its old shell and into a new one, the shadow of a sea eagle soaring overhead or ripples in the water that reveal an otter.
And so, regardless of how well I might come to know the place, how many hours are spent looking, there is always the capacity for childlike astonishment and to see it as if for the first time.
Liz Myhill is an elected member of the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour and the Society of Wildlife Artists, she currently splits her time between Skye, Highland Perthshire and various other locations across Scotland.
(Currently Liz is not showing on Waternish but will be doing the Art Skye showcase group exhibition at Isle Ornsay in April and her own show there in October.)
From Visit Waternish – we have a strong connection with Liz as she is the daughter of a founding member. But also she has designed our very popular tea towels which are available locally in our craft galleries or on their on-line sites.