I am fortunate to live out in the Scottish countryside where every season delights us with glorious light. From my window I often see the most exquisite works of art painted by God’s finger. Many times I have tried to depict that beauty but somehow I am never satisfied with the result. What I see is so beautiful, the creation itself dressed in spendour, that it feels almost irreverent to interfere with my brush. I keep trying to capture a little bit of that serene magnificence that permeates all I see, like a miracle, changing every element under the sun, changing even me.

There is beauty in the menacing clouds, in the sleeping fields at sunset. Yet, there is also beauty in the geography of a face and the story it tells. I feel more comfortable painting the human figure, perhaps because I am a human being, acquainted with the imperfection inherent to my condition. One could argue that rendering the human creature is all the more complex, perhaps it is. But I am a human being, I am not the warm red clouds torn by the golden fingers of the sun. I am not the amber light flooding the fields of churned soil or the cold wind tickling the naked bushes and trees. I am a simple man who has the winter light etched in his eyes.

Today, as I write this, my window shows a perfectly peaceful composition and its peace changes me inside. I find that our environment changes us in a fleeting moment. The same Northern light that plays with the fields fills our home and rests placidly upon my wife’s face while she poses for me. The whole beauty in the world lives in her eyes and shines in her pupils as she looks at me. I must try to capture that, just a moment in our lives, a reflection, through her eyes, green like the fields and amber like the light.