There could be worse places to be stormbound than on mainland Orkney, especially when you can sit in front of the huge kitchen window at Linkshouse, and watch all day long, the Atlantic waves roaring towards you, fetched all the way from Newfoundland, then crashing chaotically onto the cliffs of the Brough of Birsay.

I’m very fortunate to be spending the next couple of weeks on an artist residency with the Pier Arts Centre in Orkney. It wasn’t until I recently when I had the chance to get a large number of my paintings up on the walls at the Phoenix Gallery, as part of North East Open Studios, in Aberdeen, that I had a real chance to step back and take stock of what my painting is really about, and call it an epiphany moment, but seeing them all together I realised that although I have always thought of myself as a landscape painter, what I’m really painting is the weather - is there such a word as ‘weatherscape’? If there is, I think that’s me, a ‘weatherscape painter’.

With this revelation in mind, I’m working now on a series of work to do with ‘weather’, and with weather all around us, influencing everything we do from the way we live, to our art, our architecture and our livelihoods.

Here at the pierartscentre I’ll be out every day walking and sketching on the Orkney islands’ dramatic coastlines and translating these into small paintings and prints back in the studio. Weather is around us, and it is within us. Weather leaves its mark.

Storm bound

Taking a risk