Chris Bushe: Island Light

Islay has an irresistible attraction for most painters who have set up easel on its shores, but seemingly for Chris that compulsion to return is at its strongest. The Hebridean Islands have long featured in and inspired the creative endeavours of the Scots. The remoteness of the place and its extra ordinary natural beauty, untouched by almost 13,000 years of habitation, offer endless opportunities to a landscape artist of Chris’ calibre. His technique, to those few who are unaware, involves the building up of thick layers of oil paint, creating a luscious surface texture that seems as at home in a mixing bowl than a painting. This layer is then manipulated, dragged with a knife or splattered with more liquid pigment, to capture the raw natural environment around the Island’s landscape or the spray of surf against the rocky coastline. Of Chris’ many talents his chief is surely this ability to capture the spirit of the Hebrides, in particular that of Islay with which he feels such an obvious affinity.

Undoubtedly Chris has a great love for the Scottish natural environment of the West Coast. In this current series of works he continues his interpre tation of the drama of the wild seas and the rolling fields and headlands of the Hebridean Islands. The resulting images induce a sense of standing near the edge of civilisation, a proximity to prehistory through the landscape runs through each image. His landscapes are always unpopulated, the seas unsailed, an emptiness that emphasises both the timelessness and the abstract quality of the work. Individually and as a collection, the paintings are a masterful expression of one man’s passion for, and understanding of, a particularly beautiful part of his native land.