"Reflecting on Longhope Sound" - launched on March 17th 1969, from the original Longhope Lifeboat shed seen here - the lifeboat T.G.B capsized while on a rescue mission. This personal homage to her courageous crew of eight, whose lives were lost, set in motion the first chapter of our fund-raising journey in aid of RNLI Scotland – https://www.rnli.org.uk A chapter that unfolded through my chance meeting on a train with George Livingstone – whose first-hand witnessing of the return of the T.G.B that fateful day inspired him to compose his tribute song.

Welcome on board ‘Awash with the RNLI’ - our long-term, fund-raising project – which we started up by visiting the Orkney Island of South Walls, on which the current Longhope Lifeboat is stationed. Having crossed the Pentland Firth to Stromness our voyage continued across to Hoy and thence the Cantick Head Lighthouse.

That first evening we were delighted to be welcomed by the Stromabank Pub Choir; a wonderful example of community spirit that I was pleased to capture in an on-the-spot painting and subsequently an ‘Out and About with Paul’ video. The following morning saw me down at Longhope Harbour, brushes and palette in hand to capture the current RNLI Longhope Lifeboat – the Helen Comrie – her crew headed up by Coxswain Kevin Kirkpatrick in this year of 2011. Thankfully the Helen Comrie was berthed in the harbour and stayed put, which enabled me to complete the painting – which I had already committed to leaving with the choir, in order that they could use it as they chose to raise funds for the Longhope Lifeboat Museum.

Central to this open-ended, fund-raising project is a growing collection of original oil paintings from which we publish Fund-Raising Limited Edition Prints and as such, central to this reference gathering trip was my quest to find the subject that would give me everything I was looking for to complete my first Master Oil Painting in this RNLI Collection.

SUBJECT - the subject of each of these ‘narrative’ paintings will be prompted by a back-story unique to any one particular lifeboat station or its environs and community  -  which will make every one of the paintings unique.

Furthermore, I had been waiting for some years to start work on a series of paintings on rock pools, where I could bring my signature features to play – the quality of light, reflections and transparency. And that was what I had found the previous late afternoon, when crossing from Brims to South Walls – the ideal subject, illuminated by the low-lying amber light of the slowly sinking sun on this early Autumn day.

Foreground rock pools dominating a composition in which the Longhope Lifeboat Museum could be seen framed by the headland of Brims - an iconic image, telling of the courageous crews of Lifeboats past and present.

METHOD - these Masterworks oil paintings are created using my unique method, a method based on traditional techniques, which are progressively worked through in layers from dark-to-light; a process that cannot be hurried, nor short-cuts taken. First, the underlying thinned colours of the underpainting, next the impasto stage, with glazes and tints used extensively to enrich and subtly enliven the oil painting – it is through these techniques where the ‘art’ of oil painting comes into its own.

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

Paul Taggart

Artist : Author : Presenter : Producer

'The T.G.B.' by George L Livingstone

arranged and recorded by Corralach is included on their first CD 'Corvidae' – http://www.corralach.co.uk

It was a dark and stormy night in the year of sixty-nine,

When eight brave men took out their boat and went to heave a line,

When those eight men took out their boat,

To battle through the storm,

One thing that they did not know was they’d never see the morn.

Chorus:

Wind and wave, the tempest raged, the storm was at its height

As the Lifeboat men of Longhope sound sailed out into the night

They battled up that stormy firth, through wind and wave and storm,

Their boat it headed through the waves, going ever eastward on,

Their thoughts were of a crew of men, stranded on a rock,

The Lifeboat men of Longhope Sound had filled their minds with hope.

Wind and wave, the tempest raged, the storm was at its’ height,

As the Lifeboat men of Longhope Sound sailed on into the night.

They saw the men were safe ashore, then homeward round turned they,

When their boat was struck by a cruel wave and capsized in that stormy sea,

The crew men of the TGB, the bravest on the sea,

Gave their lives, so others could live, in that stormy Pentland sea.

Wind and wave, the tempest eased, the storm had passed its’ height

When the Lifeboat men of Longhope sound were brought back from the night.