Calum McClure

This print was created in conjunction with the Glasgow Print Studio 50th Anniversary Here & Now Legacy Project. "Behind the main house on the island of Eilean Shona, there is a steep incline followed by shallow depression; in this hollow the rarest and most prized trees have been planted. The place feels almost sacred, holy, with the trees stood round in a ring like monoliths or standing stones. Some of the trees have, however not fared so well in the Scottish climate, and look in decline. There is an atmosphere of melancholy coupled with the beauty of the towering wellingtonia and other specimens that have taken to the location well.

This etching was made after a painting of this location. While making the painting I wanted to capture the feeling of prehistory that the place and positioning of the trees gave me. I ended up looking at the cave paintings at Lascaux in France for the line, as well as the colour, which seemed to chime with the earth colours on the island. The shadows cast on the cave walls also somehow mimicked those cast on the undulating ground by the trees. In the etching I wanted to focus on these shadows and have employed various techniques to describe them: spit-bite, sugar lift, aquatint, and hard ground."

Calum McClure was born in Edinburgh in 1987 and graduated in Drawing and Painting from Edinburgh College of Art in 2010. He has been a member of Glasgow Print Studio since 2015 and roughly half his artistic output is now monotypes and etchings, which are produced alongside his painting practice. He is a painter who immerses himself in his surroundings and the artistic process of representing them. He understands how paint can convey the poetry of suggestion and is absorbed in the infinite possibilities of the medium. His work evokes atmospheres, especially through the representation of light, shadow and reflections. Some of his images are almost abstract, others quite clearly representational, produced through intense scrutiny of details in the landscape and vistas, views from particular vantage points all with the possibility for further imaginative exploration. He is an artist who dreams as he sees and concentrates deeply as he paints, enabling others who view his work to be transported in a similar way. The images are positive, beautiful, and lyrical, those of a precious environment to be nurtured and celebrated.