Gareth Watson

Gareth Watson’s abstracted watercolour landscapes evoke the elusive boundaries between air, earth and water. He absorbs the solitude of the environment and the sense of place to conjure paintings that are about feelings, not rationality; about enchantment, not common-sense. Gareth lives on the Isle of Lewis and has a deep affinity with its wild Atlantic Coast which is now under threat of ‘development’. These five new paintings are a thoughtful response to Nature’s predicament in the face of Mankind’s encroachment on millennia of geology and evolving natural habitats. Quotes that accompany the paintings on the gallery walls from T S Eliot ‘Four Quartets’ and Barry Lopez ‘Embrace Fiercely the Burning World’ encapsulate in words, together with Gareth’s own painting titles, the sense of despair, but also of hope that there will be a future. These five views at Fivig, Luchruban, Bay of Arrows, Shawbost Bay and Rubhan na Beirghe may not survive for very much longer.
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