Gillies observes

West Highland Gate-Willie Gillies

To Edinburgh on Wednesday to see the Turner watercolours.This is becoming something of a habit now. It is certainly a habit which Edinburghers have taken to.There are always 15 or 20 folk looking at the small but exceedingly choice group of works which are only displayed in January.

In fact I almost didn't go but the discovery that there was a chance-the last chance almost to see a show of Gillies watercolours clinched it. I had to go! It promised to be a treat in itself, and so it was. Most of the Gillies subjects were promised-the Highlands, the fishing villages of the East Neuk, farmyards and Temple itself.

I once  knew someone who had seen Gillies drawing and he told me that the artist was as liable to hold the drawing implement at any odd angle or with any grip other than as if writing.A pencil might be held near its base and pushed up the paper.That Gillies' line is fluent and free is obvious. His use of watercolour is very striking. I thought that quite a few of the works at the Scottish Gallery tended towards a fairly liquid gouache rather than watercolour.I wonder if he ever bothered with aquapasto. I'm thinking mostly of the freer more painterly works such as Rosebery near Temple.It seems to me that Gillies is at his best in the drawings and watercolours. I remember the big retrospective almost 20 years ago at the RSA as being rather disappointing when it came to the large oil paintings and  I certainly feel that he was easiest and most natural in the lighter medium.

It was  thoughtful of the Scottish Gallery to make the catalogue of the show available online as a PDF and you can download it here.The work I'm illustrating will have a resonance for anyone who has ever been in the west of Scotland.It is a small pencil sketch.I like it because it says something about the crofting, small farming way of life there.It reminds me of the accounts of crofting life in that poignant,matter of fact,unsentimental,witnessing found in Night Falls on Ardnamurchan by Alsadair Maclean. Maclean has something to say about the make do and mend lifestyle of his father who had to cobble together shelter for his beasts from whatever  materials could be found or collected. The gate is just the sort of thing you find where farmers have to bodge things together. There are an odd number of verticals and one of the cross pieces seems distinctly rickety.The whole thing seems fragile and possibly held together with a prayer and a bit of string.