Artists in the Inaccessible: Painters, and Paintings of the Far North-West of Scotland.
Alastair Mitchell explores the paintings of the far north of Scotland from 18th century to the present day.
The landscape of Sutherland and Ross-shire is as spectacular as anywhere in the British Isles, offering immense possibilities to mountaineers, geologists and artists. Narrowing down his research originally carried out for his book The Immeasurable Wilds, Alastair Mitchell has studied the artwork of the region through the centuries, and in particular, those artists who have been drawn to this wonderful part of Scotland. His work has revealed that, whilst there are plenty of examples dating from the 20th century, there is remarkably little from the 19th century and earlier.
His talk, Artists in the Inaccessible, will show what he has found, with examples from both his own collection and from museums and galleries. The range will include work by both professionals and amateurs, some very scarce, including a pair of oil paintings of the Kyle of Tongue which are at present languishing in storage in the Government Art Collection, and which Alastair believes should be hanging on display somewhere in Scotland.
Biography
Alastair Mitchell is the author of The Immeasurable Wilds, a book that explores the history of the North-West of Scotland from the 17th century onwards – who visited the region, how they got there and why they made the difficult journey. He was able to combine a career as an orchestral musician with that of an antique dealer, from which latter, he has assembled a large collection of items relating to this part of Scotland. He has been a regular visitor to the North-West since the 1960s, his parents retiring to the Kyle of Tongue in the 1980s, and he is a firm advocate for spreading the word of the wonders of this part of Britain, which even now he believes does not always get the attention it deserves further south.