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 '
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