“Welcome to our Highland studio and thank you for dropping by to view my Masterworks oil painting, ‘Gates of Dawn’, one of a trilogy of paintings from which we have published fund-raising prints in aid of Highland Hospice, alongside ‘Winter Solstice’ and ‘Swan Loch’.

As with 'Winter Solstice', this was a gift, the view I had been awaiting, for the second of my trilogy of paintings.

SUBJECT - Although our bedroom faces west, such was the intensity of colour that saturated the morning sky we found ourselves roused from sleep. It was four-thirty in the morning of a day in early May 2008; a vivid pink bloom flooded from the rising sun as it slowly inched over the horizon. Rising from the sea, an eerie haar rippled up the brae, in shallow undulating waves. Sheep grazed on, oblivious to the stunning effect of this landscape so gracefully draped in its cloak of shimmering gossamer.

Over the thirty minutes it took for the sun to ascend from the horizon to the apex of its arc, this scene changed from the sheer pink we see here to a dazzling, intense copper orange. The spell was broken, never to be repeated.

A fleeting scene, one of which memories are made.

COMPOSITION - If you have ever been lost in mist you will know how confusing it is to the senses. Distances become confused, objects dissolve and become difficult to define. These challenges have to be faced when committing such phenomenon to canvas. To make matters worse, this particular scene contains vast distances that the ground mist has not obscured. The standard solution is to rely on the effects of aerial perspective, in which distance is created through cool colours and light values. Here however, the mist limits the value changes and the warm light interferes with expected colour ranges. But it is precisely such unexpected and unusual elements which imbue the landscape with a touch of magic.

Between each horizontal band of detail the colours and values had therefore to be balanced exactly. Note for example, the soft detail of the farm and distant trees. They required a range of values to define them, yet needed overall to be darker than the sea and hills behind and the mist at their feet. The subject of the painting thus becomes space and light, rather than, for instance, the trees or the sheep. The viewer is meant to follow the sheep from near right through the gates into the distance and on toward the rising sun, the source of the intense coloured light.

As always, we thank you for reading and watching, with best wishes from Eileen and myself,”

Paul Taggart

Artist : Author : Presenter : Producer