Catrìona ’s na Colourists

Take one Gaelic-speaking art critic who is also an animator (actually there is only one), and cook up something crazy for her to do. That must have been the challenge for Gaelic production company MacTV, given the ludicrous proposal they pitched to me in March.

They wanted to make a documentary about the Scottish Colourists, the four famous painters who filled the drawing rooms of Edinburgh and Glasgow with riotous colour 100 years ago. I was to follow in the artists’ footsteps with a box of paints and an old-fashioned film camera. After seeking out the west-coast scenes where the Colourists made their landscapes, I was to paint them again for the camera. And while I was there, in the wind and the rain, would I mind animating them too?

There were so many reasons for not doing it. For a start, I gave up painting when I was a teenager. Seduced early on by the allure of digital art, I had become adept at using digital environments to emulate real paint. From there I got into animation, and my days of easel-painting were now a distant memory.

Moreover, I had never heard of anyone attempting to animate out of doors, especially on Scotland’s west coast, in April. A good animation needs consistent lighting, it mustn’t move a fraction of an inch between shots, and it takes weeks, months or even years to do.

I couldn’t get it out of my head that no-one had animated out of doors like this before. In the late 19th century – when the Colourists were learning their trade – it was frowned upon to paint outdoors, en plein air. The Impressionists pioneered the practice (albeit in warmer climes) and were lambasted for their audacity, exhibiting ‘unfinished’ oil sketches full of rough handling and breezy verve.

The Colourists – familiar with the latest trends in Paris – learned to dash off scenes at breakneck speed, trying to capture the movement of the clouds in the ever-changing light of the Western Isles. Sometimes they went back to their studios to develop more considered canvasses, but often they were happiest with the moment they’d captured on the beach. I wanted to break the rules like they did, to see what would happen.

I couldn’t order the equipment I needed off the shelf, so I was put in touch with an adventurous local joiner who had spent years making bizarre props for Chris Evans. I drew him some wildly speculative sketches of my dream-machine, and ended up with a triple-hinged glass sandwich on a plank, so unwieldy that it would take two industrial-strength tripods to hold it up.

Day One of the shoot was devoted to JD Fergusson. The Leith-born artist had toured from Glasgow to the Highlands in 1922 (complete with rubber folding bath) and produced 20 impressive studio paintings on his return. One of these was an intriguing image called A Puff of Smoke Near Milngavie.

It took us all morning looking for the hills in the painting, the road, the village, and a possible source for the puff of smoke. Eventually we found all those things in different places, and decided that Fergusson had used artistic licence to bring them together. We settled for a sunny patch of grass in Blanefield and I constructed my Heath Robinson animation machine.

By the time I’d got it standing upright, I already had sun-burn – not something I’d anticipated. After a late start, I completed the picture, a passable hybrid of the scene in front of me and Fergusson’s own concoction. Without a single frame of animation done, I was whisked away to Balloch for the next day’s push.

Day Two was better – George Leslie Hunter’s Reflections, Balloch was easy to find, as Balloch Hotel has not changed a bit. We were right next to the bridge from which Hunter was said to have thrown his rejected paintings in a fit of pique. I resisted the temptation to follow suit, as mine were painted on glass. Anyway, I was pleased with the day’s results, because the actual hotel was visible through the glass, like a beautiful reflection of my painted hotel. It looked as if reality was just a reflection in the water.

Days Three and Four were the real voyage of discovery. These were spent in Iona, where I learned what it was really like to be a Colourist. Peploe and Cadell painted most of their works at North End beach over the course of 20 years. It’s a beautiful beach, with shining white sand, and the sea such vivid stripes of purple and turquoise that it’s instantly obvious why the Colourists are identified with these colours.

I was simultaneously roasted by the sun and battered by the wind on that beach. When the sun cast unhelpful shadows on my work I threw a tantrum, much to the director’s obvious delight. Despite wearing enough coats to look like the Michelin Woman, finished off with a fetching pair of fingerless gloves, I began to show early signs of hypothermia and was eventually dragged, wailing with frustration, into the shelter of the dunes.

I consoled myself with the fact that the Colourists often used their sketches from this windy beach as starting points, painting finished versions in their Edinburgh studios. I had learned – the hard way – why. I decided to do the same, which in my case meant taking the footage I’d already shot and adding to it digitally back home in Edinburgh.

Despite the vagaries of Scottish weather, Peploe and Cadell went back to Iona every summer for years, trying to capture those indescribable colours and the elusive light that brings them to life. I now know how they felt, and I strongly suspect that my own voyage of discovery has just begun.

Catrìona ’s na Colourists (Catrìona and the Colourists) will screen as part of the art series Ealtainn on BBC2 Scotland at 7.00pm this Thursday. The programme is in Gaelic with English subtitles.

Catrìona Black, Sunday Herald 26.09.04