Jolomo

John Lowrie Morrison has painted the west coast of Scotland since the early 1960’s. He paints the light of the west - the light that bathes the Inner & Outer Hebrides.

He uses strong colour to express that light and sees his paintings – not in the traditional chiaroscuro of light and dark -  but in darkness versus colour, which is what his painting is about: an allegorical description of the human spirit.

Morrison’s roots are in the Outer Hebrides – Kyles, Isle of Harris – where family cousins still work and live. Many childhood visits to family on Skye, at Portnalong, gave him a love of the croft.

The Croft on the Machair
The Croft on the Shore
The Croft on the edge of the Atlantic
The Croft on the edge of the World

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The Croft endures even as a ruin but eventually only the rocks will remain.

Morrison records the human imprint on Argyll and the Isles and informs his paintings by a study of the geography, history, geology and - most of all - folklore of a particular area.

Simple human imprints have always been important to him: the pole next to the croft, carrying power or phone lines; the gate from croft to shore or runrigs, the ladder constantly leaning against the croft wall – signifying the constant struggle against water & wind. And of course the peat stack – becoming rarer and rarer as island families rely less on peat.

Morrison also uses religious imagery based on biblical sources – something he has done since the late sixties at Glasgow School of Art.