A BEST-SELLING Scottish artist has unveiled a striking new body of work focusing on one special Hebridean island.
John Lowrie Morrison, known as Jolomo, concentrates on the “incredible light” of Islay in a new exhibition, Westering Home to Islay, which opens to the public this week at the Dundas Street Gallery in Edinburgh.
The show is his first in Scotland this year, and follows a sell-out exhibition at Clarendon Fine Art in London.
Morrison said: “I’ve been to Islay many times, and keep going back. I love the light there. You would think it would be much the same as the light on Mull and Iona, but it’s so different. It’s incredible, the way it changes from sun to storm. I never get bored of painting it.
“It’s such a beautiful place. It has every kind of motif a painter would want – crofts, beaches, the mountains of Jura in the distance, amazing sunrises and sunsets.”
The title of the exhibition is taken from the traditional song of the same name written by Hugh S Roberton in the 1920s.
Morrison said: “It takes me back to my childhood when my family – aunts and uncles and cousins – would get together at New Year and sing. That was a song we always sang.
“This is what this exhibition is about, the love of a place and that feeling we all sometimes have about being drawn to returning home to our roots.”
Morrison trained at Glasgow School of Art and worked in art education for 25 years before taking up painting full-time in 1997.
His expressionist landscapes in high-key colour quickly made him one of Scotland’s most popular and successful painters, with celebrities such as Sting, Madonna and Rick Stein buying his work.
Morrison, who lives and works in Argyll, has been awarded honorary doctorates from the University of the West of Scotland and the University of Abertay, Dundee. In 2011, he received an OBE for services to art and charity in Scotland.
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