Paintings of Scotland
Paintings of Scotland by Tom Rickman.
I have a Scottish grandmother on my dad’s side, Lilian, who was a Lang which where a part of the Macleod clan, apparently. She grew up in Glasgow, and father worked in the shipbuilding. So, I have a tenuous link, if needed with the country. I think it was more my looking for a wilder edge that drew me north to the highlands to go and paint. I’m never sure which comes first, the want and need to go to ‘a place’ for the place or the need to go and paint it. I‘d hope the two are symbiotic, parallel. I think more in tandem and fuelled by an innate romanticism. The edginess of the Highlands fuelled my painting trips north, it was a want of that big other place.
To be overwhelmed and seduced and to sense remoteness. These paintings are quite old now and I have never really exhibited them, but they were the beginning of a wish and decision to go beyond my immediate surroundings, to go out on a limb, to an exotic place, beyond the home. It would take me two days to drive there and going through Glasgow and passing alongside Loch Lomond with the palpable feeling of “Yes! I’m here on the edge of a greater edge.” My hearts in the Highlands… wherever I roam…… Ride that Hebridean arc.