Under Different Skies
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'Under Different Skies: Buildings, Boats and Bruck from Orkney' is an exhibition of recent watercolours by Carolyn Dixon.

Carolyn moved from Staithes to Orkney in the spring of 2005 to live on the island of Sanday. Orkney is an archipelago of islands off the north east tip of Scotland, some 70 in all, but with only 13 inhabited now. Visitors expect a bleak and desolate spot and are surprised to find a gentle land of small fields, low hills and wide white beaches. Staithes is a village of extreme perspectives, heightened verticals as steps plummet to the sea and buildings cling to each other and the hillside, whereas in Sanday there is always space and a huge horizon. The landscape changes slowly as things haven’t been torn down, remodeled, or tidied up. They are either used - or left. Carolyn says that “All this space around and between the places people live and work has pushed me to focus more closely on composition. With bigger skies - light, weather and time seem more present. Orkney is never short of weather!” Yet Carolyn is still preoccupied with the things that interested her before she moved. With a view to the past as well as the present, she questions how people live and work, what traces we leave, how we shape the landscape and what those traces tell us about ourselves.

And what's ‘Bruck’ you ask? Well it’s the stuff no one wants.