Page 55 - Art First: Helen MacAlister: At the Foot o’ Yon Excellin’ Brae
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Glen Urquhart Glen Urquhart. The glen’s kirk, or its surroundings, lent
oil on linen, 2012, 123 x 175cm itself to being a natural amphitheatre – there is opinion
that the English speakers were inside and the Gaelic out.
Glen Urquhart + Glen Moriston Most crucially, Sorley MacLean made comment on Glen
pencil on paper, 2008, 42 x 59.4cm Urquhart & Glen Moriston being alone in their innocence
of the Clearances – evident in their very appearance. The
glen names are therefore used within the drawing itself to
reference an original landscape: a landscape as retainer
and something to picture.
Tim Robinson comments on a specific Irish
situation: “That it had ever been found and remarked upon
was evidence of how intensively this shore, and indeed the
intertidal zone all around Connemara’s labyrinthine inlets
and archipelagos, was explored by human hands…This
repeated laying-on of hands, to me, is the human touch
that has made such places holy.” In crude comparison, it
1
has been the non-laying on of hands in this instance that
singles out Glen Urquhart and Glen Moriston.
1 Connemara - Tim Robinson, p246
Drawing = © St Andrews University Library, Photographic Collection
Painting = © St Andrews University Library, Photographic Collection
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