Friday 27 May 2016

coloured hills

Lesley Punton - Big dark rock peak - oil on board - 2016

Lesley Punton - Lucky hill - oil and silverpoint on board - 2016

Lesley Punton - Misty mount - oil on board - 2016

Lesley Punton - Hill of Brightness - silverpoint on gesso on board - 2016
Some new paintings in a larger series of works exploring the naming of the gaelic mountain landscape through colour. 

Much of the way landscape is named in Gaelic is highly descriptive, and colour crops up again and again. Hills such as Beinn Dearg Mor are conventionally translated as 'big red hill' - these rather lumpen translations don't do justice to the multiple and often contested possible translations of the Gaelic to English, and to the shifting sense of colour when in the hills. In attempting to translate these hills into a field of colour (or light), my title translations have partly been arrived at through conversation with Alec Finlay, so my gratitude and thanks are sent to him here.