John Taylor, artist and hill walker, describes the work of Skye-based

printmaker Tom Mackenzie in extracts from his introduction to the

catalogue for Mackenzie's new exhibition.

SKYE is the largest of the inner islands. Its geology is diverse,

going back two-and-a-half million years. It has a huge, notched and

jagged coastline. The variety and moods of the landscape are stunning,

and always there is the sea. Skye is unique. It is from this vast

cornucopia of visual riches that Tom Mackenzie's art is made.

Tommy was born in Lerwick and was only 10 months old when the family

moved to Skye. He was educated at Portree High School and left home to

enroll at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in Dundee. At the tender

age of 17 this did not work out. Tommy pitched up in London and did a

variety of menial jobs.

In the evenings he started to attend life drawing class and was

accepted for a foundation course at Hornsey. It was hard going, for no

grant was available and he had to work nights. Later the

emphasis was on etching, where

the quality of the mark and the

distancing of the process was appealing.

Tommy had visited Glasgow Print Studio before 1976, but it was around

then he became a permanent feature, living in Glasgow. We became good

friends from then on.

One of his print outlets in Skye was the information centre, Portree.

His father Jonack, now dead, once took me eagle spotting -- he was a bit

of an authority on this subject, and a character. In 1983 Tommy returned

to Skye to establish Skye Original Prints in Portree, a fine little

gallery and workshop where the public could see the plates being inked

and the paper printed.

Tommy is the only printmaker I know who lives off his work. His prints

appeal to a great range of people, from the person who can profess to

know nothing about art and will call the print a picture, to those

artist/printmakers in more rarefied areas of modernity. This is quite

special.

Tommy can be very self-effacing, yet he knows he's good, seeing

himself as ''a good journeyman'', a ''more than adequate craftsman'',

but you would be hard pushed to get him to admit to being the artist

that he is.

Many people who buy Tommy's work are from Skye or have left, like so

many West Highland people, to find work on the mainland or abroad, and

what better gift than a haunting print of the Misty Isle.

Tommy as an artist is very much a part of this community. He recently

was presented with a medal after having run his 10th Skye half-marathon.

He coached the tug of war team, The Tattie Pickers, and was twice cox

when the Portree boys rowed against the Plockton boys across the Inner

Sound. The less said about this the better -- however, much money was

raised for charity.

Tommy frequently visits us at the Glasgow Print Studio when he is

etching and proofing his new works. You will find him of a morning

sitting in the studio kitchen, thawing out, with a freshly made roll-up

and a cup of tea, concentrating on The Herald crossword, which he will

do in just over half an hour. He is gently easing himself into the

morning and the working day ahead. Maybe in the evening we will have a

dram or two and some good crack.

In 1976 when Tommy arrived at the Glasgow Print Studio, he was doing

two-plate etchings: a cold plate, Prussian blue and black;

a warm plate, raw umber, burnt sienna and red oxide. With these two

plates he could achieve a great range of colour and tone, a fine example

being The Cuillin Ridge, with a profile of intense black gabbro on the

right and an airy void below; both are what the Black Cuillin are famous

for.

At The Ebb, an early print, also two plates, is like an action

painting, the mark-making vigorous. You feel you are in there with the

strong wind blowing squally showers across the dark promontory, sea,

rocks and weed.

Tommy soon began to use a third plate which was a purple, hot or cold

according to the mix of scarlet lake with Prussian blue, plus the same

colours on the other two plates as before. The first print, using the

three plates, is titled Glencoe, although strictly speaking the subject

is not really Glencoe. Tommy gathered his information while doing the

West Highland Way; it's the view from the Devil's Staircase looking back

towards Creise and Meall a'Bhuiridh at the top of Glen Etive.

The subtlety of the light is astounding. The eye moves past dark low

rock to pick up the wet icy light in the foreground, rests for a moment

on the stand of dark fir trees, moves through some light mist to pick up

the River Coupall, then skywards to the deep covering of snow on the

hills, where already cornices have formed, and always ever conscious of

the great implied mass of the Buchaille to our right, the sky above

about to bring more snow.

Do not be fooled by the amazing simplicity in so many prints; it is

often hard fought, the plate often undergoing intensive workings. This

is the process that Tommy enjoys -- an image can move down a direction

and then back through a process of selection and discarding. Sometimes

his plates change like the Scottish weather he so often portrays.

Sgurr Dubh Mhor and we are back on the Cuillins; again the black

gabbro and the blue airy space contrast the glow of the sun, which has

just set, leaving a chill in these mountains, the most awesome in

Britain. Naturally these magnificent hills feature a lot in Tommy's

work. Cuillins from Sliguchan is a large print, broadly handled in

bravura style; the pin clouds to the left of Sgurr nan Gillean have the

lush quality of oil painting, such as you might find in a D. Y. Cameron,

also a printmaker and lover of Tommy's subject matter.

Away from Skye, there is the evening calm of Loch Cluanie. In Lochs,

Lewis the delicate little impressionistic marks of the drying peat bogs,

the gradation of light on the loch and the warm light on the hill beyond

have all the hallmarks of Tommy's work. I feel I've been there many,

many more times than is indeed true, and a great deal of my awareness of

Skye comes from my looking at Tom Mackenzie's prints.

He has taken me especially to those wild, lonely, desolate places,

where one feels very small; he has taken me to the home of the eagle,

the curlew and the snipe. I thank him for this.

* The exhibition Tom Mackenzie: a Retrospective opens at Glasgow Print

Studio on Saturday and continues throughout August.

' Skye has a huge, notched and jagged coastline. The variety and moods

of the landscape are stunning, and always there is the sea. Skye is

unique. It is from this vast cornucopia of visual riches that Tom

Mackenzie's art is made '