Letting the Paint Do the Talking

This is your second Lammermuir project. Why do you paint the Lammermuirs? discovered the Lammermuirs in 1997. I was taken by their accumulated history – they are full of collective and personal memories. always return to areas that absorb and intrigue me, and was pleased to be able to revisit this area of Scotland. became fascinated by this seemingly barren, wild area so close to Edinburgh. I painted there in December, January and February, often in deep snow, and outside in the freezing weather. was attracted to the low sunshine during winter months in the hills.

In late 2019 a trip had planned to the Antarctic was cancelled by the organising company. With no other trip abroad possible owing to Covid restrictions, visits to the Lammermuirs were easily organised. The area can be reached in an hour from Edinburgh, where I live, and can be home again the same day.

created studies there in the depths of winter, often after snow. Despite my eagerness to catch the best of the day out on the hills, caution is required. On one occasion a large police officer stopped me from attempting to reach the top of the moor in really bad weather. He did the right thing! I was driving a car totally unsuited to icy and snow-covered roads so exposed to the elements.

What draws you to the Lammermuirs and how do the images you make there follow on from your Arctic works?

Initially I found it quite difficult to change my palette from the cool colours of the Arctic to the earthy colours of the moors. In the Arctic there are very few traces of human presence, but there is a spirit of the place. The Lammermuirs are so much smaller, and the area is full of signs and traces of its past history and present usage. Its intimacy brings together competing commercial and leisure activities. The rapidly changing weather there is very different too, obscuring and then revealing its nature. The land has been worked and reworked and its past history layered.

If gates predominate in some of my images, that’s because there are so many. They mark out human territory – exactly the imprint I search for in areas infused with historic significance.

You don’t like to think of these works simply as landscapes. Is the human presence important to you? Certainly in your Arctic works, it seemed to be the human story that was often uppermost in your mind, even faced with wilderness.

The human presence is absorbed into the spirit of the place – that’s my inspiration. An appreciation of the history of the Lammermuirs is essential to an understanding of what we see now.

The man-made motifs that punctuate the landscape give clues to its history. The well-worn paths taken by the fisherwomen and the recent scars made during installation of wind farms suggest the presence of people.

My Arctic works were inspired by the story of Dr John Rae and his contemporary Lord Franklin, whose search for the Northwest Passage ended so tragically. Spirit of place is a strong emotion, and the more explored the Northwest Passage the more began to feel their presence, even though they had left little trace of their travels. But the Lammermuirs are a more shared landscape, composed by ourselves.

You’ve only painted the Lammermuirs in winter think. Why is this? Do you think you could paint them in the summer?

I do not like high summer, when everything is green and lush. The sun is high in the sky, which makes everything flat and featureless.

In winter the structures of the trees, their skeletons, make graphic patterns without the obscuring woolly green foliage. Yellow fields of oilseed rape in spring are tempting and abundant but a bit too obvious. In winter, too, the low sun reveals historic and current landscape features. Old paths, ancient walls and sheep pens, for instance. The elements we have imposed on the landscape – pylons, wind farms and forestry plantations – stand out with graphic clarity.

The most dramatic feature of the high Lammermuirs – the patchwork of burnt heather – is pure land art, created by management of the moors for rearing grouse. As a former grouse-beater, admire its design perfection.

As they’re made in winter, your Lammermuir paintings are often dark. Is their mood important to you? Are you even conscious of it? How has the mood in your paintings changed over the years?

Some of the works are dark, yes, but but not all of them. The tonal values are influenced by the low light levels in winter. High on the moor, the sky is the dominant event. The ever-changing cloud pattern sometimes creates minutes of darkness before the sun pierces through again.

Working in the crystal-clear atmosphere of Arizona or the ice floes of the Arctic requires a different response to tone and colour.

My early works were inspired by the west coast of Scotland: the history of the Clearances and the barren rocky coastline where people were forced to live before boarding ships to America and Canada and a new life. Their spirit memories are ever present, their ghosts still inhabit those areas, wherever you walk. Naturally those paintings were often dark and brooding but enlivened with flashes of colour. Back then, I used oil-paint glazes of black over collage and under-painting. Later, after working for months in the clear light of Spain and Santa Fe, I abandoned my use of black glazes, leaving colour and texture to speak for themselves. My use of pure black glaze had become redundant. A great deal of control and chance are involved in the use of layering and overlapping of collage and paint in the studio. usually like looking towards the south or into the setting sun high on the moor. The layers of land and sky recede into the far distance. always need to go back to the Lammermuirs to revisit reality. This is my practice for the many locations visit; the variation and advances are the very stuff of an artist’s working methodology. return to locations to see if there are changes and this in turn sets off my imagination to express what I see in semi-abstract or truly abstract ways. A progression from what is seen and observed to a personal reality. Picasso’s 1945 lithographs of a bull, drawn through eleven separate studies, are the perfect example, comprising both a series of individual works and also a process of refinement towards abstraction.

Clearly you favour looking at the Lammermuirs from beneath so that they form the skyline. Do you also go right into the hills? What is your usual approach? Usually it seems to be from the north looking south. Are there any particular spots that you return to, and do they have associations, or is it simply access and visual appeal?

Usually drive to a location. If I spot an area where there’s a confluence of structure that excites me, stop to make studies. Winter light is short-lived so I don’t walk into the hills as it would take too long and would have to carry the materials use. used to be paid to walk in the hills as a grouse-beater. I’m not too keen on doing it again now!

I’m thinking of experimenting with a drone as it would give me a different perspective, rather like looking at a map. Maps have always fascinated me, the way they chart tracks and elevations, symbols within the land, and show us the planographic geological land mass as another reality of what we see in fresh and exciting ways.

The Lammermuir landscape is punctuated with fences, pylons, tracks and gates. The gate image features in many of my works as a marker of ownership and human intervention.

You work in sketchbooks, filling pages while working on the spot. Your sketchbooks are in landscape format but your paintings never so. How do your sketches relate to your finished works, which are often vastly different in scale as well as format?

My sketch studies are the starting point for my creative work in the studio. The plan and composition reference the observed reality. The studio is where I take these references and use them to develop compositions free from the reality of the observed world.

In the past I’ve often found that the low, rectangular composition, the standard layout for works of a landscape nature, seemed somehow unnecessary. I usually find that the right-hand side fades away, there’s something redundant along that extended side. The result is that when I’m creating a work in the studio, I’m using a square format. For instance, it seemed impossible to interpret the vastness and colour of the Painted Desert in Arizona as a panorama. The solution found was to work on a vertical ‘slice’ of the landscape.

In the studio like to start with small postcard-sized works, experimenting with colour and composition, letting the paint do the talking. I’m not bound by what did in my sketchbooks, but they are the ‘Bible’ that refer to if I stray too far with ‘effects’ of paint.

These small works might then become larger, more expansive works on paper before they become large canvases but it’s important to point out that, whether large or small, each work, for me, carries equal weight and importance. Also, the so-called constraints of printmaking actually offer me another valuable approach when I’m working from studies: the very nature of the print medium allows me a further degree of separation from my initial sketches. Recently I’ve been enjoying uprights – a lot of my monotypes are in this format. do a good number of vertical landscapes, getting a slice of colour.

Nothing is fully worked out except the bones of the composition – the colour, collage and paint lead the way. It’s all about accident and control for me.

How have your Lammermuir paintings affected your practice and techniques? You say monotypes have become especially important to you. Do you think there’s a reason for that? Your palette changed in the Arctic. Has it changed because of the Lammermuirs?

Ever since was introduced to the technique by Ron Pokrasso in his studio at Santa Fe in 1985, I’ve used monotype printing to develop images and experiment with colour. The wonderful ‘accidental’ colour combinations and surface textures inform my paintings. Working from my sketchbook studies, I can take the images on to a more simplified and pure composition, and further from the reality of heather and sky.

Fences, gates, pylons and wind farms all become graphic motifs to play with. The moorland images have altered, changed and developed in unexpected ways; some of them are reminiscent of my love of textiles and patchwork quilts.

However much use monotype, danger always lurks if I presume to know what will happen if print one colour over another. There are always surprises and disappointments for the over-confident!

For investigating the Lammermuirs, had to set aside my Arctic palette and explore new combinations of colour, form, tone and texture. Over the three years that I’ve been immersed in these moorland images, my compositions and colours have changed and evolved into more simple forms.

In the past had artist-heroes whose work I admired – Matisse, Picasso, Diebenkorn and Tàpies. Artists may be influenced at some stage in their early careers but as they grow and develop they have to absorb these influences and become their own person, with their own voice. So now my practice is derived from what I see, married with my mind’s eye. It has to be what my head and hand guide me to create. That’s why bridle when someone makes a cursory assessment and calls my work solely ‘landscape’. If that was all it was, I’d never need to leave my studio to paint a thing!

Different Views

maureen barrie

More than twenty years ago, on a business trip to Bath, was fortunate enough to catch Barbara Rae’s exhibition ‘The Lammermuirs – An Lomair Mòr’ at the Adam Gallery. For me, these glorious paintings validated the importance of the Lammermuirs within the Scottish landscape. Juxtaposed with these earlier paintings, her new work from the region presents a unique insight into both artist and subject.

The Lammermuirs lie around 30 miles south-east of Edinburgh. Part of the Scottish Southern Uplands, these outstanding moorlands are undeniably challenging to access. Few roads run through them, and public transport is non-existent. Concealed by East Lothian to the north and the Scottish Borders to the south, they remain relatively undiscovered.

The name Lammermuir – An Lomair Mòr in Gaelic – is thought to have come from the Old English words lamba and mor lambs’ moor, with the Scottish word for moorland, muir being substituted later. Sheep have been reared there since Neolithic times and traces of sheep-farming can be seen everywhere, with the remains of abandoned pens and folds commonplace.

Unlike Barbara’s visits to the Lammermuirs, which are highly productive, my own are much more orientated toward leisure. They began back in the 1960s. My father held the opinion that living by the seaside negated the need for summer holidays, but day trips to the Lammermuirs were the exception. As boys, he and his friends used to cycle to the moors and camp overnight. He had happy memories of those times and wanted us to have a similar experience. Unfortunately, when he first suggested this, there was a fair amount of opposition, mainly concerning the lack of amenities. ‘Why can’t we go to Dunbar instead?’ My father would respond: ‘Don’t look for what’s not there – just embrace what is there.’ And of course he was right.

North Berwick, where was brought up, is only about twenty miles from the moors, but everything in the Lammermuirs was so different to where we lived.

Shepherd's wife wearing an 'ugly' bonnet, Humbie, East Lothian, c 1925 National Museums Scotland

Wide open moors, sheep-cropped grass, hills swept with heather, and burns and rivers that ran crystal clear. It was so still and quiet, only bleating sheep and birdsong broke the silence. We seldom saw anyone. There were no towns, no shops, just small hamlets and scattered hill farms. I didn’t care about the amenities; was more than happy with what was there. Occasionally we made a trip in the winter – early winter, before the snow came and the mountain hares’ coats turned white.

In comparison to the coast, there was something intangible about the moors that could never quite articulate properly. It may have been to do with how quickly the elements altered everything. In summer the wind could whip up clouds from nowhere, dragging them at such speed across the sky that their shadows looked like a dark veil being pulled over the hills.

We often climbed Lammer Law, taking in the unbelievable views over the Lothians and across the Firth of Forth to Fife. At Fasney Bridge we spent hours up to our knees in freezing water constructing dams and trying to catch minnows with brightly coloured fishing nets. We made trips to Whiteadder to see the new reservoir under construction. This involved re-routing a road and the demolition of Millknowe Farm and Kingside School before the reservoir opened in 1968.

Once the novelty of seeing sheep and cattle wandering about on the road wore off, we turned our attention to the wildlife, often spotting deer, mountain hares, otters, red grouse, pheasants and merlins. We also made attempts to catch salmon and trout in our poorly constructed dams. My father explained that the moors were a natural habitat for adders and warned us not to disturb them as they were poisonous. We spent hours searching for them regardless, to no avail.

As children we were far more interested in exploring the hills and rivers than in considering much else. accepted what saw: few people and numerous sheep. It never crossed my mind that someone must own the land. Initially had no idea that vast swathes of the heather were actually grouse moors, cultivated cover for game birds, so it was a surprise to discover that most of the Lammermuirs are owned and managed by large sporting estates. And the farms and cottages we passed back then are part of these estates.

We were unaware that the old tracks and paths beneath our feet had been created over the centuries to transport goods, livestock, wool, grain and fish. Drovers taking livestock to market, packmen peddling their merchandise, travellers, monks and fishwives all left their mark on these moors. The Herring Road is well signposted, and walkers and cyclists retrace the route Dunbar fishwives used daily, carrying heavy baskets of herring to the market at Lauder, a distance of 28 miles.

Nor were we aware that the Lammermuirs are an important archaeological area. Aerial images of these ancient sites reveal a different view, one that can’t be seen from the ground. In some ways, Barbara is doing the same thing with her paintings. She wants us to see the view from her perspective – the human hand on the landscape, the importance of small details, to recognise colours we don’t see.

Ultimately that is all we can ask of anyone: to consider a different view.

Lammermuir – Burnt Heather, 1997

20 × 29.5 cm

Mixed media on paper, sketchbook

Lammermuir – Late Sun 1997

20 × 29.5 cm

Mixed media on paper, sketchbook overleaf

Snow – Lammermuir (detail), 1997

20 × 29.5 cm

Mixed media on paper, sketchbook

Border Church

56 × 76 cm

Mixed media on paper

Winter Afternoon

52 × 76 cm

Mixed media on paper

Artist’s Biography

The Royal Academician painter Barbara Rae is acknowledged internationally as an incomparable colourist and a master printmaker.

Rae attended Morrison’s Academy in Crieff, Perthshire, before studying at Edinburgh College of Art. She then taught art in secondary schools, later lecturing at Aberdeen College of Education, and finally at Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Glasgow School of Art before opening her own studio as a full-time painter and printmaker.

Her pronounced ability was recognised early in her vocation, securing her gallery representation in Edinburgh, London and Bath. Solo exhibitions soon followed in international venues in Chicago, New York, Washington, Santa Fe, Oslo, Hong Kong, Dublin and Belfast, and a number of annual shows during Edinburgh’s International Festival. In the United Kingdom successful exhibitions have been held at Aberdeen, Glasgow, Manchester, Cambridge University and Pallant House Gallery in Chichester.

Rae exhibits annually at the Royal Academy of Arts in London and the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh and her work is held in national museums, galleries and by collectors the world over. She was made a Commander of the British Empire in 1999. The full-length portrait of Rae painted by Geoff Squire hangs in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh.

Her work is garlanded with awards and prizes, among them the Guthrie Medal, the Calouste Gulbenkian Printmaking Award and the Hunting Group Prize. She has honorary doctorates from St Andrews, Aberdeen and Napier universities and was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of Architects of Scotland in 2018. For almost ten years she was a member of the Royal Fine Art Commission, and has served on the board of the British School at Rome, on the Council of the Royal Academy and on the Art Panel of the Council of National Academic Awards. She has judged national art competitions and lectured extensively, from Edinburgh to Tokyo.

For relaxation Rae cites cooking and travel, but the latter involves disappearing for weeks on end to some of the world’s remotest areas in search of inspiration. These include not only the edges of the Highlands of Scotland and the West of Ireland, but also the Arizona desert and the ice floes and Inuit villages of the Northwest Passage, Baffin Island and Hudson’s Bay.

Definitive books on Barbara Rae’s art are Barbara Rae: Major Work published by Lund Humphries (London, 2008), and Barbara Rae: Prints and Barbara Rae: Sketchbooks, published by the Royal Academy of Arts (London, 2010 and 2011 respectively). Rae’s creative output includes portraits, tapestries, ceramics, jewellery and even a Royal Mail stamp issued in 2018. Also in 2018, the Royal Academy published Barbara Rae: Arctic Sketchbooks and Barbara Rae: The Northwest Passage A number of very successful exhibitions were held throughout 2018–19 at the Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, The Pier Arts Centre, Stromness, Orkney, and Canada House, London. Galleries in both London and Bath premiered Rae’s new Lammermuir works in 2021 with another exhibition planned for 2022 to coincide with the Edinburgh International Festival.

Bibliography

Barbara Rae RA, The Lammermuirs – An Lomair Mòr, exh. cat., Adam Gallery, Bath, 2021

Barbara Rae RA – Arctic Paintings, exh. cat., Adam Gallery, Bath, 2019

Barbara Rae: Arctic Sketchbooks, London, 2018

Colin R. Greenslade, Duncan Macmillan, Tom Muir and Tagak Curley, Barbara Rae: The Northwest Passage London, 2018

Barbara Rae RA: Postcards from the Artist exh. cat., Adam Gallery, Bath, 2017

Barbara Rae CBE RA exh. cat., Portland Gallery, London. 2016

Barbara Rae: Return Journey, exh. cat., Open Eye Gallery, Edinburgh, 2016

Rae: Recent Works, exh. cat., Richmond Hill Gallery, Richmond-upon-Thames, 2014

Barbara Rae – New Paintings from Ireland and Spain exh. cat., Adam Gallery, London and Bath, 2012

Barbara Rae CBE RA RSA: Works on Paper exh. cat., Richmond Hill Gallery, Richmond-upon-Thames, 2013

Barbara Rae: Recent Paintings exh. cat., Richmond Hill Gallery, Richmond-upon-Thames, 2011

Richard Cork and Gareth Wardell, Barbara Rae: Sketchbooks, London, 2011

Andrew Lambirth and Gareth Wardell, Barbara Rae: Prints, London, 2010

Barbara Rae RA exh. cat., Adam Gallery, London, 2010

Barbara Rae RA: Landmarks – Unique Images – An Exhibition of Recent Monotypes, exh. cat., Tom Caldwell Gallery, Belfast, 2009

Recent Paintings by Dr Barbara Rae CBE RA RSA RGI RSW featuring Ireland, Spain, Malibu, exh. cat., Richmond Hill Gallery, Richmond-upon-Thames, 2009

Bill Hare, Andrew Lambirth and Gareth Wardell, Barbara Rae London, 2008

Barbara Rae: Sierra, exh. cat., The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 2006

Barbara Rae RA – Mayo: An Exhibition of Recent Monotypes and Colour Etchings exh. cat., Tom Caldwell Gallery, Belfast, 2006

Barbara Rae RA: Arizona exh. cat., Richmond Hill Gallery, Richmond-upon-Thames, 2006

Barbara Rae: an tlarthar – The West, exh. cat., The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 2003

Barbara Rae RA: Paintings from Ireland, exh. cat., Art First, London, 2002

Barbara Rae: West exh. cat., Aitken Dott Ltd, Edinburgh, 2000

Barbara Rae: Painted Desert exh. cat., Art First, London, 1999

Barbara Rae: Lammermuir exh. cat., Aitken Dott Ltd (The Scottish Gallery), Edinburgh, 1998

Barbara Rae: New Paintings, exh. cat., Art First, London, 1997

Barbara Rae: New Paintings, exh. cat., Art First, London, 1996

Barbara Rae, exh. cat., Perth Museum and Art Gallery, 1991