“Winged Victory” is a drawing in pencil on paper, a study of a sheer rock face in a disused granite quarry at Tormore on the extreme west of the Isle of Mull in the Inner Hebrides. Here the granite is a distinctive iron ore red in colour. It is sharp and fissile, carrying on its surface the marks of geological time, of melt and cleave. In the 19th century Ross of Mull Granite, at once durable and decorative, was put to use across the world as pavements and docks, lighthouses and monuments. The canopy that shelters Prince Albert in his memorial in Kensington Gardens is held aloft by columns from the quarry at Tormore sent by sea from the Ross of Mull via the Sound of Iona south to London.
A graduate of Edinburgh University, Edinburgh College of Art and McGill University in Montréal, I have been the recipient of a Leverhulme Trust Artist in Residency Award at SAMS Marine Laboratory in Argyll, a Royal Scottish Academy Residency for Scotland based in the RSA Collections and awards in support of my practice from national, regional and private charitable trusts. I have exhibited in gallery and non-gallery sites nationally and internationally. My drawings have been shortlisted for the Derwent Art Prize 2018 and the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2021.