Scotland is a beautiful country. Don't get me wrong, I love my country. I love my hills of green, I love that I live in a picture postcard rural countryside.
My world is still a land where time has stood still since the 1940s.
My home is "the end of the line" with power cables and BT phone lines.
My neighbours? Cows and sheep!
Our skies are so clear we are officially one of only four in the world, dark skies parks. On a frosty evening you can almost touch the stars.
In fact, I live in what looks like a perfect scene clip from "Outlander"
Aaaaaaah, this beauty I live in. So.. "what's the catch?" I hear you whisper..
Easy - RAIN!!
Along with our hills of green and lush forest lands comes rain. And we are not talking about an odd day here. Sometimes here we can go for months and months waking up to dreich, grey, mist and rain..
But you see, that's the beauty of being an artist.
My world is never grey.
My world is anything I want it to be.
I go to my studio, I put my Alexa on - I ignore the world outside, I live in my world of colour.
And for me, that colour is almost always Turquoise :)
Shades of aquas, shining emeralds, sparkling corals and twinkling seafoam gently breaking into golden sands..ahhhhhhhh my world of the Caribbean.
I just came home from a wonderful cruise around Northern Europe. My wee Mum is a gentle 88 years old. My daughter lives in Cayman. We three are all very close and we decided, that we would each, take time out, to be together and take that "once in a lifetime three generations of girls" cruise.
It was so precious - we treasured every moment.
We were hugely lucky and the sun shone for us as we meandered around the canals of Amsterdam and lavished in sweet pastries in the Patisseries of France.
Of course, I bored them to tears with constant shouts of "ooh look at that patch of seafoam" (eh.. Its the North Sea mother there are vast oceans of the stuff!)..
I stare at the waves breaking from my balcony - mesmerising, I watch the flow of the sea, dispersing magically and changing second after second..
I love that I can bring this to life in my art.
I love that my art can take me anywhere I want to be.
It always breaks my heart saying goodbye to my daughter. She has lived in Cayman now for eleven years. She is married now of course, and Cayman is her home. I don't wish that she was back in Scotland, for my heart bursts with happiness that she is living in such a beautiful land.
I am thankful to her, without her, would I ever have fallen so madly in love with this Caribbean paradise?
Yes, I have visited numerous Caribbean islands, from Aruba to Curacao, from Tortola to St Thomas, I have been blessed to have visited more than sixty islands around the world... BUT ..my heart lies in Cayman.
Perhaps one day, it will become my home also.
Meanwhile, when the world outside here is grey, when people head to work with their rainmacs and waterproofs, fighting with umbrellas in the wind - I don't care. I see sunshine, I see blue skies, I see golden beaches, I see corals I see turtles and sting rays and the splashing ocean
In a world of grey - I see Turquoise!!
