Profiles of Artists exhibiting at The Beauly Gallery

Profile of Terry Williams

Terry is a freelance photographer based in the Isle of Skye. She moved to the island in the spring of 2000 after 20 years of regular visits, mainly on foot and mainly in the winter you could almost say she came despite the experience! After the comparatively soft lighting of West Perthshire, I found the sheer clarity of the island air daunting at first. However, being largely self-taught, I'm accustomed to learning by trial and error, so I simply made a start.

For a main-lander-turned-island-dweller the coastline is like a magnet and I return to it over and over again. I've grown adept at boulder-hopping between tides, laden with camera and a hefty tripod, with which I have a love hate relationship. If you're ever in Skye, and see someone standing perilously close to the incoming tide, apparently wrestling with an octopus, it will probably be me!

As a nature photographer, I am drawn especially to the natural patterns, textures and shapes in my surroundings: from shells to lichens to spider's webs and strange shapes in icy puddles. Then there are the stones, the island is littered with the evidence of human habitation that is being reclaimed by nature, from brochs and ancient cairns to whole townships, harbours and miles of drystane dyking along high mountain ridges. I am keenly aware of life on the edge, both in the natural world and as experienced by island communities past and present. Whilst I can be absorbed for hours by nature's painting, I am unceasingly intrigued by the story behind the subjects I frame in my camera's lens. This is the work that gives me a buzz and Skye is the place I have found it. One lifetime is not enough.