Five days on Fair Isle

Five days into my week on Fair Isle, with two days still to go, and I’m already wondering how I’m going to leave.

Getting here was quite an adventure in itself. The boat crossing was the roughest I’ve ever experienced and, for the first time in my life, I was seasick. Not exactly the gentle romantic arrival I had imagined! But once I’d recovered and got my feet back on solid ground, I could start to take in where I actually was.

Fair Isle has been a place I’ve imagined for a long time. Unlike Orkney, which is somewhere I know well and carry around in my memory, Fair Isle was somewhere I had only really known through photographs, family history and stories. My connection to the island is a personal one. My 3x-great-grandfather was born here at a croft called Shirva, leaving with his family for Orkney in 1832.

So one of the first places I wanted to explore was Shirva and the surrounding area. There’s something quite strange about walking around somewhere knowing that people in your family lived here nearly 200 years ago. I’m not sure I expected to feel anything particularly profound - and I’m still not sure that I do - but there’s definitely something about knowing that this landscape was once part of their everyday lives.

I’ve determined not to turn the trip into a hunt for my ancestors, though. I’m here as an artist. I came to Fair Isle to look, walk, make, photograph, sketch and generally absorb as much as I can. I wanted to experience the island rather than arrive with a fixed idea of what work I should make. And the island has certainly given me plenty to look at.

The landscape feels huge despite Fair Isle itself being so small. There is so much land and sky (and sea), and, like Orkney, the weather can completely change the view in a matter of minutes. I’ve been particularly drawn to the quieter places, the ones that aren’t necessarily the obvious landmarks. My favourite place so far is Golden Water, a small loch(an) near the North Lighthouse.

There’s something about it that really caught me. I’ve returned to it more than once. It’s a peedie (or should I say peerie as in Shetland) piece of water, but surrounded by such an expansive landscape that it somehow feels much bigger. I can imagine it will stay with me and my art for a long time.

And that’s really what I’m looking for on this trip - not necessarily paintings to make immediately, but things that stay in my head.

Colours.

Shapes.

Lines.

Light.

Weather.

The feeling of walking somewhere.

The way the landscape looks when the light changes.

But it isn’t just the landscape that I’m here to experience. This afternoon I’m heading to the Harvest Home Fair in the community hall, which will be a chance to meet more of the people who live here and get a little closer to the community. It’s easy to think about Fair Isle purely as a landscape - particularly as an artist - but it’s also a living, working community. I’m interested in seeing a little more of that side of island life and hearing from the people who actually call Fair Isle home.

I came north with a deliberately restricted palette of blue-greys, greens, browns, yellow and a touch of pink, and I’ve been making sketches and watercolours alongside taking photographs and gathering ideas. I’m also thinking about the relationship between the place I know and the place I imagine.

Orkney is full of memories for me. Fair Isle is becoming a new set of memories. And somewhere between the two is probably where some of the interesting work will eventually come from.

There’s also been a slightly bigger personal milestone sitting in the background of all of this.

This month marks nine months since I became a full-time artist. After 24 years working in financial services, leaving my job at the end of 2025 and committing to my art full-time was a pretty big change. Nine months in, I’m still learning what that actually means.

There have definitely been highs and lows, but being able to spend a week on Fair Isle researching, observing and making feels like a pretty special way to mark those first nine months. And I wouldn’t have been able to do it without support. A huge thank you to Falkirk Council and the Visual Artist and Craft Maker Awards (VACMA) Forth Valley for funding this research trip. Having that support has given me the opportunity to step away from my usual routine and spend proper time in a place that I’ve wanted to visit for a long time.

I’ve still got two days left. So there’s plenty more walking, looking, sketching, meeting people and hopefully a little less seasickness to come.

I don’t know yet exactly what I’ll take home from Fair Isle.

But I know I’ll be taking something.

And I suspect Golden Water will be part of it.