Page 103 - Art First: Helen MacAlister: At the Foot o’ Yon Excellin’ Brae
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Bealach nam Ba – The Pass of the Cattle Bealach nam Ba [sic] makes its own link to topics of
oil on linen, 2009, 148 x 210cm population and politics through it being a parliamentary
Countra Wit road. [This engineering of Telford, links also to
oil on linen, 2009, A2 MacDiarmid’s upbringing beneath Langholm Library (to
which Telford left a bequest) – the ground of his self-
Bealach nam Ba education and latter politics.] The language interest, with
pencil on paper, 2008, A2 an eye on Scots and Gaelic, find its visual outing in such
selection – kicking a stone along the road between them.
Bealach nam Ba – The Pass of the Cattle, land-link between
two points, in this case Kishorn and Applecross in Wester
Ross.
For countra wit I quote David Craig. “The style
used for this plainly draws directly on spoken, unliterary
Scots. That kind of sceptical, ironic downrightness is in fact
what came to be the standard idiom of Scottish poetry. It
is always present, suggesting a kind of norm of common-
sense (what Burns called ‘countra wit’), even in the most
abandoned comic flights. My point here is that it is through
such processes in the sensibility, rather than in any outward
censorship, that ‘Calvinism’ mainly affected the deeper life
of the country.” 1
The physicality of the pass connotes duality
or countering. The normality of ‘reposing’ at a summit is
incidentally satisfying – no slippage: a space for the reflex
action of seeing our own seeing. A ‘Rest and Be Thankful’ –
another parliamentary road.
1 Scottish Literature and the Scottish People – David Craig, p76
Drawing = © ‘Original image courtesy of British Geological Survey’
Painting = © St Andrews University, Valentine Collection
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