'Return of the Native' (exhibition inspired by a poem by J. Killick)

‘Return of the Native’ Exhibition inspired by a poem by John Killick

(opposite) Peter Davis RSW, ‘Landskap’, watercolour, ink and graphite on canvas (30x60cm) This catalogue was produced for the exhibition ‘Return of the Native’. September 6 - October 5, 2024, Edinburgh.

Curated by Jurgita Galbraith. COPYRIGHT © 2024 · BIRCH TREE GALLERY

Building on the success of the 2022 exhibition inspired by A. Škėma’s poem, this exhibition continues to explore the profound synergy between poetry and visual art. This year’s theme centers around the evocative poem “Return of the Native” by poet John Killick. Each artwork in this exhibition was conceived and created in response to the rich imagery and emotional depth of Killick’s poem. The participating artists uniquely connected to the themes of landscape, belonging, and how the concept of ‘native’ resonates with them. Their works bridge the worlds of literature and visual art, reflecting their personal interpretations of the poem.

Jurgita Galbraith

John Killick John Killick was born in Lancashire and now lives in Musselburgh, East Lothian. He has loved Scotland ever since childhood holidays spent in the country. For thirty years he was a teacher in schools, colleges and prisons. He spent the next thirty years working on communication and creativity with people experiencing dementia. He has always written poetry. He has published seven books on dementia, and five books of poetry.

The poem ‘Return of the Native’ is from a sequence he wrote some years ago after a visit to the Outer Hebrides, when he was reflecting on the effects of the Clearances on the lives of the Islanders.

RETURN OF THE NATIVE

by John Killick

In exile, he took the colours from the cloth.

Now he would give them back to the landscape where they belonged: reddy-browns to the sun-scorched lichens, purple and green to the heather-tops, obsidian to the outcrops of rocks, white to the sands and grey to the shallows, cool blues into the translucency of the air.

Thus having unburdened himself of his memories he had no need of the tweeds.

Peter Davis RSW, ‘Hemkomin’, watercolour and liquid graphite on canvas panel (30x30cm)

Paula Dunn A lightness of air was started as a demonstration triptych from one of my workshops. The limited palette of yellow ochre, crimson alizarin, cerulean blue, titanium white and the textured surface of the painting resonated with the poem’s reference to textiles.

These textures were created by scratching and scraping back with a variety of tools as well as the use of solvent to create more organic marks. This part of the process revealed the layers of colour underneath and created quite a busy, colourful and textured surface. Introducing some opaque tints created quieter areas and at this point in the process the painting started to suggest a direction and my mark making became more considered.

My work usually has very high dark / light contrasts and I was conscious that I needed to create a brighter, more colourful piece that worked to the brief. It wasn’t always comfortable and there were times I struggled to resolve the painting.

The biggest struggle was to resist introducing a new colour to the palette and slip into my comfort zone of creating darker darks!

A lightness of air has been created using oils, cold wax and gold leaf.

‘A Lightness of Air’ (triptych) 104 x 38 cm (framed), oils, cold wax and gold leaf on board

‘Traces I’, 29x13 cm, acrylic and mixed media on panel (opposite page) ‘Anglesey Fragments’ & ‘Selected Moments’, 20 x 20 cm, acrylic and mixed media on panel

Derek Boak We are bound to the land.

Marking each journey with a scar, a memory of our presence.

Destructive, possessive arrogance personified.

Yet, filling the soul with beauty and a sense of wonder: The spirit soars fleetingly.

Too late to see the damage.

We cling to possibilities.

A search for equivalence: A memory of better times: A monument of return.

Traces...... of a forgotten earth.

I wept as the wind beckoned the last breath of Summer, whilst Autumn ran to the hills.

Colour broken.

Ashen leaves.

I wished for the heat of the day.

The surfaces I’d plundered, colours I had betrayed, the seasons passed.

I withered, knowing time was extinguishing I give my soul to the earth.

Atonement

Peter Davis, RSW For me, the poem The Return of the Native represents a return to a spiritual home, if not an actual homecoming. It references the idea of landscape and memory, and the deep connection with a sense of place.

For many people, memory is so tightly bound to a particular place—perhaps where they were born, lived as a child, or even a favourite holiday destination.

‘Bonnhoga’ is a word from the old Norn language of Shetland that can mean a place of resort, a former haunt, but more importantly, a spiritual home and, quite literally, a ‘child-pasture’.

The colours in the poem reflect different elements of the landscape, and in my painting, that landscape is from the Northern Isles of Scotland, which has been my home for several decades. These colours are fleeting, ephemeral, like a memory—being given back to the air, the water, and the white paper.

It’s a process of dissipation or evaporation, only truly possible through the medium of watercolour. The colours quickly flow away to emptiness... niente.

‘Bonnhoga’, Watercolour on paper, 2024 (50x70cm)

Glynnis Carter

‘Return of the Native’ is a sensitively written poem that conjures a strong visual image of the landscape. The longing to return to one’s homeland is beautifully expressed.

My initial idea was to incorporate fabric into the painting. I bought some Harris Tweed swatches and experimented with different ways to integrate fabric and threads into the painting, but the results felt contrived. A small piece of work on canvas, using hessian and scrim as a base layer, was more successful but didn’t work as well on a larger scale.

I wanted the colours to have a fluidity that would suggest they are being poured back into the landscape, merging but retaining their own distinct identity. A closer look at the work reveals areas of texture created by pressing fabric into wet paint, and drawn threads of colour using oil pastel.

In all of my work, the aim is to create a painting that has an immediate visual impact, gradually revealing more in the layers of colour and texture.

‘Colours Returned’, mixed media on canvas, 102x102cm

Heather Armstrong When I first read John Killick’s poem, my immediate response was to the imagery of the Scottish landscape, woven with the colours he described. Scotland is my home, where I have spent much time exploring the countryside. My ceramic art draws on my love of the textures and forms I encounter. However, I also have a strong attachment to textiles, having been encouraged in needlework from a young age. My challenge, therefore, was to bring these elements together using my preferred process, which produces work that displays texture but is largely ‘Contour’, ceramic, 32 x 18 cm devoid of colour, other than the earthy tones created by smoke-firing ceramic.

Somewhat surprisingly, I quickly conceived my bowl form, which is open and contoured, reflecting the landscape with its wide, undulating horizon. The impression of a weave accentuates the lie of the land, while the burnished rim reminds me of the comfort of home. For the smoke-firing combustibles, I sourced wood shavings from native hardwoods, seaweed and driftwood from the Solway coastline, and heather from the Galloway hills.

Samantha Yates

I was hooked from the first line. I have been working on an early 20th-century stained glass memorial window for a Scottish tweed manufacturer, made by the Scottish stained glass artist Douglas Strachan, who described himself as a ‘weaver of pattern’.

The window is rich in pinks, reds, purples, greens, muted browns, and yellows.

All around me, the colours of the stained glass, the woven cloth, and the landscape blend together. It was easy to choose the heather, with its tiny flowers that give vibrant yet subtle colour and texture to the landscape—the purples and greens.

Stained glass with copper wire, 38x23x12 cm in a glass bottle 18.5x6.5x4.5 cm

Emanuel Matt I have been an immigrant all my life. I settled in the north-west of Ireland in 2021, and since then I have been submerged in the landscape— visual, emotional, and historical. ‘North, North-West’ is a response to ‘Return of the Native’, where I hoped to invoke the physical landscape in the poem through the colours it describes and its emotional tension.

These are the colours that surround me on the Co. Mayo coastline: reddy-browns to the sun-scorched lichens / purple and green to the heather tops.

My reading of Killick’s poem is from the perspective of an individual consciousness in an unpeopled landscape, a reminder that we enter and leave life alone. Yet, as we meander through the poem, we become aware of the vastness and strength of Nature. It has been here long before our species inhabited the planet, and it will be here long after we leave. We sense the resonance of another home, an abiding mystery to which we all belong.

‘North. North-West’, 55 x 46 cm, oil on canvas

Jurgita Galbraith

I acquired my name and the tartan not by birth, but through marriage. In 2023, I climbed my first munro in Glencoe and began to give my colours to the landscape.

The outline was drawn intuitively. I closed my eyes, touched the edges of the paper to feel the boundaries, pressed the chronometer’s button, and let the lines emerge. It was only one minute in white pen on black paper. Love is blind. With every stitch, I was letting it go. Thousands of them.

Slowly and painstakingly. Memories, hurts, unrealised dreams, seeking forgiveness.

The colours are of the Galbraith ancient tartan. I used a needle I acquired in Japan from a craftsman needle-maker of many generations. The hills were also done in traditional Japanese Sashiko stitches. Most of the lines stayed within the perimeter of the paper. Yet, two of them crossed the boundary – something travels into infinity. The first stitches were in blue, in a traditional satinstitch used by my mother. I finished in white: the satin stitches were done in two strands, and then I cut one strand and finished the outline stitch in one. Solo. There is no need for the tweed anymore. It will take many more hikes to unburden the memories.

‘Letting Go by a Thousand Stitches’ 14 x 43 cm, cotton embroidery thread on paper

‘From The Land’, medium and small teardrop vessels, porcelain with colour inlay

Carol Sinclair As a ceramic artist working in porcelain, I employ my signature inlay technique to infuse colour and pattern into my pieces. Inspired by people and places, my work aims to evoke a sense of connection and familiarity, resonating with intention of the poem and memories of homeland carried through cloth.

In this work, I gently wrap soft slabs of clay to form vessels that serve as containers for our own precious memories. These forms are evocative of the rolling hills and mountains of Scotland, while the layered greys, greens, and purples mirror the harmonious hues of the landscape. The lines of colour reference not only the natural world but also the threads woven together in handmade cloth. Through these pieces, I seek to blend the tactile beauty of porcelain with the emotional richness of memory, creating artworks that are both visually and sentimentally evocative.

‘From The Land’, small wrap vessel, porcelain with colour inlay

‘Obsidian to the Rocks’, 72 x 90 cm, mixed media This wild, expressive landscape could be anywhere in Scotland, where jagged black rocks contrast with white sandy coastlines. It’s composed of glimpsed memories—the distant hills across the water, windblown seas, cliffs, and a broken fence once used to keep sheep from straying. The gestural brush marks are made with handmade brushes, and the collage layers are printed tissue paper and momigami kneaded fabric, more tartan than tweed. The poem Return of the Native served as a starting point, with its sensitive depiction of the Scottish landscape and a colour palette that echoes the subtle tones of tweed.

Ruth Thomas

‘Fabric of Fife’, 72 x 90 cm, mixed media on paper I recently walked a section of the Fife coastal path, along the cliff tops near the village of Elie, with its steep drop off to the white sands and striated black rocks below and vistas to the hills beyond. Taking inspiration from the colour palette in the poem, ‘Return of the Native’ I began by making some tweed like fabric pieces using the Japanese momigami process of kneading paper. I then created a landscape from memory building up layers using the collaged papers, then painting windblown grasses and sea with a brush I had made from foraged materials I had found during my walk.

Catriona Taylor I was inspired by the colours and strong sense of landscape in the poem. I noticed that John lives in Musselburgh and so imagined that it was the Lammermuirs he had depicted in the poem.

I know the Lammermuirs well, as I was brought up in Lauder, which is on the other side of the hills. We often walked there when I was growing up.

I love the reddy-browns in the poem and the sense of the landscape being like cloth. I wanted to create a piece of work that depicts the colours, rhythms, and folds of the hills by painting a hillside, but also to use a map to give a sense of place. I traced part of the Lammermuirs’ map onto the piece, but as the work developed, the map became more and more obliterated until it was just a suggestion, with traces of the lines and contours as mere shadows under the surface. This meant I could then incorporate lines from the poem into the collage, as it had become less busy and there was more surface to work on. The words could be central.

‘Return 1’ (opposite page) and ‘Return 2’, 42 x 30cm, mixed media on maps

Susan Macintosh, RSW

‘Saltings, Harris’, watercolour on paper

Although I live in Scotland I still hunger for the places I haven’t been for a while. Reflecting on exile and the yearning that would evoke, I find my spirit on the peripheries; the feeling of the Atlantic vastness close by and weather systems rolling in with the tang of salt and grasses wet in the rain showers.

In landscapes on the edge of the ocean, light has a wonderful quality but changes very, very rapidly.

No matter what media I try I cannot keep up with the changeability of the light and sky. Even the moment of glancing at the paper to pick up the relevant colour is too long….. the colours in the sea, sky, water and land have already altered.

Stevi Benson The poem evoked a sense of returning home after a long, maybe difficult time away. The fresh start that going back can offer. The future laid out like a blank sheet of paper but with your new story shaped around returning to the comfort and familiarity of the past.

The line of the poem which stood out to me is “to the sun scorched lichens”. I have cut paper lichens from crisp white paper. The lichen shape is familiar but the colours of the story of what has gone before bleached out by the sun, faded to memory, and ready to be rewritten with a new future. I gathered the lichens in a circle. Circles have no end or beginning, a loop to represent life and lifecycle. An optimistic shape that speaks of new beginnings, unburdened from what has gone before.

‘Begin Again’, cut paper, 60 x 60 cm

Bruce Shaw

‘Contours’, 45 x 43cm, burr elm (Scotland), marbled zinc, obsidian flake (Peru)

From the ice fields that crown the dormant volcano Coropuna, the native gazed down along the length of the range, which lay like the spine of a great serpent weaving from north to south. Its serrated ridges, peaks, and glaciers fed meltwater to the grasslands, lochs, and forests of the vast plain below. Here, where condors ride thermals and the gods of past civilisations were said to reside, the native pondered, not wishing to falter.

After a short descent, the ridge leads to the high top of Braeriach - the brindled upland - where, from the corrie, whose granite radiates the sun’s passing moods, a spring emerges on the plateau and tips, a cataract, cascading to the indigo-cobalt blue of Loch Coire an Lochain. At the watershed, lush mosses and lichens of yellows, greens, sienna, and crimson carpet the boulders, where it is said evidence of rare volcanic black glass can be found.

Treasured by the ancients and now watched over by the corrie’s ravens, enigmatic as the obsidian glinting from shadows, here in contemplation, the native thus shed his memories and, unburdened, turned homeward at peace.

Alison Jardine

‘Coast 1’ (left), 29 x 25 x 8 cm, ‘Coast 2’ (right), 24 x 19.5 x 8 cm, glass The poem “Return of the Native” instantly conjured up the colours of the Scottish landscape in my mind—a source of inspiration for much of my work. The line “white to the sands and grey to the shallows” particularly resonated with me as I imagined the brilliant white sands and grey rocks of Pol Gorm on the Isle of Colonsay—my favourite bay with my favourite view in the Hebrides. I used this as a base to create two vessels that showcase the colours of the sea and land surrounding that place, from the aquas of the crystal-clear shallows to the deeper blues and greens of the sea, extending towards the hazy purplish outline of Jura.

Angela Taylor For the last twenty years the inspiration for my work has come from both the Scottish landscape and also from contemporary Scottish poetry. My home environment is North East Fife, bordering the Tay Estuary and within easy reach of the Fife Coastal Path.This allows me to absorb a variety of land and sea scapes on regular walks in both locations. I am also a frequent visitor to the Moray Firth coast.

Two lines from the poem in particular resonated with me on first reading: obsidian to the outcrops of rocks - reminding me of walks along the Fife Coastal path and white to the sands and grey to the shallows - which conjured up expanses of beach on the Moray Firth.

My aim is never to ‘re-create’ a landscape in a representational form but rather to respond to it in a way which interprets the surfaces and textures of land and water. I am also influenced by the effects of climatic and seasonal changes on land and sea.

In my work I strive to convey the essence of the landscapes I observe and my process involves constantly distilling images until I feel satisfied with the result. Only those elements that are necessary to convey my thoughts and ideas are used. Over the last ten years I have explored the medium of screen print as a means of developing my artistic practice.

‘White Sands/Grey Shallows’, screen print on acrylic, 66 x 38 cm ‘Strata/Ardross’, screen print on acrylic, 66 x 38 cm

‘Return to the Land’, 23x25x8 cm, ceramic wood and finds A find of wood which evoked a returning movement was the starting point for ‘Return to the Land’.

I set it on a rock-like ceramic base with a pit-fired stone form – the land – incorporating lichen and wool threads – the living world – and inset a small sky-blue coloured stone – the air.

Anne Morrison Being a native Scot, born and bred, this poem struck a chord with the way I approach my work, describing the colours of the land I love and how I try to express this in my pieces. The basic elements used in the creation of ceramics come from the land, again a deep connection with the poem.

On my walks along beaches or hillsides, I collect many finds which provide my inspiration. This wandering in the landscape remains an essential part of my process.

I envisaged the ‘giving back’ of the colours as a dream sequence. The ceramic wave form of ‘Colour of Dreams’ is connected by wires, from the night, crossing an ocean back to the native land, to return memories of the tweed to their origins.

‘Colour of Dreams’, 24x24x10 cm, ceramic & mixed media

Gill Thompson On reading the deceptively simple poem Return of the Native by John Killick, it evoked for me the essence of the Scottish landscape, particularly the Western Isles, where I live on the Isle of Lewis.

In my imagination, the poem conjures up a ‘mood board’ or list and serves as a reminder of the colours and elements that make this unique environment so special. The tweed, spun and woven on the islands, combines the strands of wool, creating a multitude of patterns that reflect both land and sea.

In response to the words of the poem, I have used techniques that I practise in my studio and have made a multi-faceted piece of work, collaging monoprinted papers, sketches, cut paper, and woven papers to represent the tweed as it returns its colours and textures to the land where they originated. The result is a mixed media image incorporating some of the phrases from the poem, presented as a collection of ideas.

‘He took the colours from the cloth…’

Mixed media print collage on paper, 34 x 56 cm

Penny Hunt Native to what and where... Some people stay in the area where they were born, but most of us move around. Where are our roots? Where feels like home? Where do we feel we belong and are accepted?

There is a sense of belonging to the land rather than to a specific place—being rooted in nature, weather, changing light, and the passing of time. Nature grounds me.

Knowing the land, where the wildflowers grow, how the trees bend to the prevailing wind, and where the water flows, matters to me. I belong where I understand my surroundings.

Passing through, moving on, and finding your place in the world is a natural part of human history. Becoming native to wherever you are is how you find your happiness—where you can cast off your tweeds.

‘Morning Mist in Native Lands’, 33x33cm, oil on board

Hanna Salomonsson

To me, Return of the Native depicts the notion of anchoring one’s identity in a landscape. Although I have spent nearly half my life outside my native region of Småland in southern Sweden, I still strongly rely on its untamed forests for my sense of self. The Pinus sylvestris (Scots Pine) tree characterises the Småland landscape.

In traditional folklore, the pine is a symbol of constancy and resilience, and these trees are often depicted as enduring harsh conditions with grace and strength. In several parts of the world, pine trees have also been planted in close proximity to burial sites to symbolise eternal life and offer protection. The UNESCO World Heritage-listed Skogskyrkogården (the Woodland Cemetery) in Stockholm is based on the idea of a burial site set among the pines.

A similar burial site was designed for my hometown, Ljungby, and this smaller woodland cemetery plays a central role in my family history.

My triptych for Birch Tree Gallery draws upon the pine forests and all their underlying connotations, and the pieces convey the colours and textures of these majestic trees. My vessels are for the pines, where I lay my memories to rest.

‘For the Pines’ large (~ 40 cm dia), medium (~ 30 cm dia), small (~ 20cm dia) , glazed stoneware with gold-leaf

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