BY DANIEL CULLEN
‘Night Shift’, an exhibition by artist Sarah Bold, came to a conclusion last Saturday following a successful run at Summer Café in Portree this month.
In the exhibition, painter Sarah Bold turned her attention towards the island after daylight has disappeared and landscapes are often seen through windscreens, as winter weather and routine journeys form part of rural life.
The Free Press spoke to Sarah about the exhibition and her work more broadly, with the artist saying that ‘Night Shift’ grew from her experience of winter travel on and off Skye.
“I am interested in painting rural life and how we interact with the landscape around us. Like most Skye folk, a lot of time is spent driving, either around the island or trips to Inverness, Glasgow or Edinburgh,” Sarah explained.
“During the winter the daylight hours are short and it is often dark when we set out and dark upon our return. We live in a beautiful landscape but it is a very different beast in the winter. The paintings are quite dark and less romanticised than you may expect from living on Skye, as I wanted to connect to the underbelly of winter.”
Alongside Summer’s café trade, the venue has become a valuable exhibition and events space in Portree, meaning it was the perfect choice of venue.
“As well as doing absolutely cracking sandwiches and coffee”, Sarah said, “Summer has been a fantastic place to show art, as they are one of the few, if not the only, place to exhibit in Portree. I loved it as I was really keen to do an exhibition locally and show the paintings to a wider community and not just in a ‘gallery’ space. Portree is crying out for a collective space for artists to gather and show work together. It’s really difficult for artists to find space to show on Skye, so I am thrilled that Summer have created this space for interesting music, art and good food too!”
Originally from Australia, Sarah now lives on a croft in Harlosh, where her studio is based. Her work has been exhibited widely across Scotland and the UK, including at the Royal Scottish Academy, Flowers Gallery, Mall Galleries and Salisbury Museum, and she has previously won both the ING Discerning Eye Landscape Prize and Jackson’s Painting Landscape Prize.
“I am a landscape painter, although my paintings are never of a particular place. I walk daily, checking sheep on the croft, surrounded by sea and mountains. The paintings emerge from memory, colour and light. I am especially drawn to the resonance or energy felt from certain landscapes, how the land speaks to us, what secrets it holds.”
The contrast between Australia and Scotland has also shaped her sense of scale.
“Growing up in the vast Australian landscape and now living on a small Scottish island, scale is important to my work. I hope to draw the viewer closer to the small paintings, to create intimacy and connection to a deceivingly epic landscape, the grandeur of the natural world and our place within it. It is here we find a quiet foreboding amongst the beauty.
“Scotland is incredibly beautiful but there is an ‘oldness’ and ‘wildness’ that can be felt, even though its small. The landscape is epic and doesn’t feel contained like the rest of the UK. It is these qualities that remind me a lot of growing up in Australia. Whilst I do enjoy painting the romantic beauty Scotland offers, I am more interested in the grit of day-to-day living and how issues such as climate change and the marine environment influence our daily lives.”
That foreboding extends beyond winter darkness. Climate change, ecosystems and the marine environment are recurring concerns in Sarah’s practice.
“Throughout the years, the effect of climate change, particularly within the rural landscape and marine environment, has been an ongoing thread underpinning my practice. It is these outlying island posts that are often the forbearers of climate change and the slow creep of catastrophe.”
That interest in island and coastal life will now travel further afield. Bold is preparing for an exchange residency with Art for Guernsey alongside Guernsey artist Tim Gaudion.
“I’m super excited to be doing an artist exchange residency with Art for Guernsey, a charitable initiative to bring contemporary art to the community of Guernsey. I will be making a couple of trips there over the autumn and winter, and Guernsey artist Tim Gaudion will be spending some time on Skye. We will both respond to each island, exploring ideas around maritime and coastal life. We will then be doing an exhibition together in Guernsey around the end of May 2027.”
