Page 58 - Art First: Helen MacAlister: At the Foot o’ Yon Excellin’ Brae

And I bleer my een wi’ greetin. John Purser on Burns’s Ay Waukin O: ‘for it was a new
pencil on paper, 2008, 42 x 59.4cm thing, to enter so deeply into the feeling and inner mood of
a tune and realize it in language.’ 1
Douglas Young talks of ‘the typical Scot as
a schizophrenic creature at once realistic and recklessly
sentimental.’ 2

1 Scotland’s Music – John Purser, p231
2 A Clear Voice – Douglas Young, p146

Epic detachment The diptychs are extracts from Roderick Watson on Hugh
neo-dhàimh bharr-sgeulach MacDiarmid: “In fact, what MacDiarmid has taken from his
interest in Gaelic art is a sense of epic detachment. This is
Passionate objectivity conveyed through a special kind of passionate objectivity,
méidh-chothromachd lasganta as if poetic description were an intense and relatively
selfless act which does not seek to invest the landscape
diptychs, digital print, 2007, 105 x 148mm, edition of 10 with Romantic shades of the writer’s own psyche.” 1
Printed by The Summerhall Press, Edinburgh The quotation notes MacDiarmid’s attention to
Gaelic – the 2 diptychs are simply translating that thought,
Kind thanks to: one move. The cool passion of distance – or space or
2
Paul Harrison, Visual Research Centre place – has bearing when one considers Gaelic, like Scots,
Michael Schmidt, Carcanet Press having 3 distances – seo, sin & siud: here, there & yon.
1 MacDiarmid (Open Guides to Literature) – Roderick Watson, p72
2 Translation by Aonghas MacNeacail
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