Wendy Sutherland

Strange coincidence. I was at Dyce airport last Friday, waiting to fly to the Outdoors Show. They had some art on display. I was drawn to the work of one artist. I recognised the work when I  caught up with last week's "Landward" BBC programme. Her name is Wendy Sutherland. Her site is here, and there's a link to the other artists on display at the airport, and here's the link to the BBC page about the outdoor artists featured in the series.

Having walked in rain, mist and low cloud, there is always something to see, hear and feel.

Cunntas 06.12.07

BBC2 Alba's QnA session. I'm really enjoying these. The panel were asked about topics ranging from the Year of Highland Culture, naming a teddy bear, Trump's quest for a golf development, the knock-on effect on other developments being delayed for environmental concerns, house prices in Inverness and Oban, and finally, a great question linked to the "Highland Lives" project.

The question was: who would you present to the world in a project like that?

The panelists chose:

• Morag Macleod (link), formerly of the School of Scottish Studies.
• Alexander MacDonald (1) and Dr John MacInnes (link, 2)
• Murdo Macfarlane of Lewis (The Scotsman, Wikipedia)

As to Cunntas, you can catch some of the earlier episodes here.

Millais

There's a display of Millais' work in the Tate in London. He was a 19th Century British painter, one of the pre-Raphaelites. I wasn't aware that he painted landscapes in his later life, and Scottish landscapes at that.

What got me thinking was a comment on Newsnight Review of "pushing the Victorian colonialism to one side" and then looking at the paintings.

Link to the exhibition.
Link to Wikipedia article.

Can you really view art out of context of the politics of the day? Do the politics behind this work matter, or does the message carry across the years even after the original conflict has ended? If it doesn't matter for one piece, can politics matter for other works, especially if they are non-political works.