From Wild Place to Living Room: How a Painting is Born

It Always Starts Outside

I came across a quote by the artist Joan Mitchell recently that has stuck with me: “I paint from remembered landscapes that I carry with me… I could never mirror nature, I would more like to paint what it leaves with me.”

It resonates so deeply because it describes exactly how I work as a Scottish artist. I carry Scotland’s wild, beautiful places with me wherever I go (the light on a loch, the sweep of an Orcadian bay, the bruised purple of a winter hillside) and it is that emotional memory I try to recreate in every painting.

My work isn’t about photographic replication. It’s about recapturing a feeling: my freezing cold cheeks, the smell of the ocean, the glistening colours of wet sand underfoot.

Capturing a Feeling, Not a View

As a Scottish landscape artist, I rarely make just one painting from a single place. I paint in series, because one canvas could never contain everything a landscape leaves inside me. A visit to Orkney, for example, might produce five or six paintings before I feel I’ve truly done it justice.

The process always begins on location. I fill sketchbooks with plein-air drawings (rain-splattered, wind-blown, lightning-quick) and take hundreds of photographs from every angle and in every kind of weather. It’s an act of total immersion.

Back in the studio, I’ll glance at that material and then deliberately set it to one side. My goal is never to be too literal. The sketches and photos serve as a memory trigger, not a blueprint. What I’m really reaching for is the emotional response the landscape stirred in me.

Back in the Studio: Letting Go

Translating memory into paint is where the real work, and the real freedom, begins.

Part of that process is editing: stripping away the extraneous details, simplifying shapes, amplifying others. As an artist, I believe it’s our job to show the world as we feel it, not just as we see it. We live and paint in the extremes.

Painting as therapy? Perhaps. Painting as truth? Absolutely.

My work has grown increasingly abstract over recent years, distilling each landscape down to its most essential elements; the bare bones of light, colour, and movement that give a place its character.

The Physical Process of Painting

Colour is at the heart of everything I do. Interpreting the colours of Scotland’s hillsides, lochs, fields and coastlines onto canvas gives me a sense of fulfilment that is genuinely hard to put into words.

My go-to tools are long-handled Pro Arte short flat brushes and the best Liquitex paint I can afford. I build up layers on the canvas surface, disrupting its clean rigidity to introduce movement, texture and vibrancy.

Once the base layers are down, I continue adding depth with paint, and often introduce extra marks and highlights using Inktense pastels, charcoal or gold leaf. Whatever the piece is calling for.

Throughout all of this, I’m working towards harmony. A balance of tone, texture and colour that leads the viewer’s eye across the canvas and makes the whole thing feel right.

Knowing When a Painting is Finished

Knowing when to stop is one of the hardest-won skills a painter develops. Early in my career, I found it genuinely difficult, and I took cold comfort in stories of famous artists who would quietly tweak canvases at their own retrospectives.

What I’ve learned is that the decision should never be rushed, and should never be made the moment you put the brush down. The painting and I need time together, space to breathe, settle and think. I hang a newly finished piece in my studio and live with it for days, sometimes weeks, before deciding whether it needs anything more.

What I’m looking for is a feeling of rightness. Not perfectionism but genuine excitement about what’s on the canvas.

From Studio to Living Room

Once a painting is professionally framed, it’s signed, photographed and prepared for exhibition. From there, it heads to its new home.

Many galleries offer home trials so buyers can experience how an artwork actually lives on their wall. How light plays across texture, how colours shift throughout the day, how the piece sits within a room. It’s an invaluable way to see a painting as it’s truly meant to be seen.

Original art does something that prints simply cannot. Brushstrokes, smears, drips and marks carry the physical evidence of the artist’s hand and intention. As a Scottish artist whose work is rooted in real landscape and lived experience, that connection feels especially important to me.

The love poured into the work is there on the canvas, and collectors tell me that’s exactly what they feel when they look at it every day.

Final Thoughts

Every painting carries far more than what’s visible on the surface. It carries its maker’s experiences, their skill, their sense of joy and wonder. When you choose an original work by a Scottish artist, you’re bringing all of that into your home.

I hear regularly from collectors who tell me that seeing one of my paintings on their wall makes them happy every single day. That means everything to me.

Explore My Work

Get in touch if you’re interested in commissioning a painting inspired by a place that means something to you, I’d love to hear your story.

paintings of scotland's landscape