After relocating to The Isle of Arran, landscape artist Naomi Rae muses on the
journey that brought her there and the meaning of home.
View from my studio, across the Kilbrannan Sound
In the autumn of 2020, I fulfilled a dream that began in my early childhood; to live on an
island. Sold up and packed up, we were blown further and further north in our laden
Transit van by fierce, autumnal gales; me, my husband and our old and curmudgeonly
Boston Terrier. Our final destination drew us north like a homing beacon; the beautiful Isle
of Arran.
I am a child of the coast and only truly feel I am where I am meant to be with the sea
stretching out before me and the land lying behind me. I grew up in a wind-whipped
Victorian terraced house, overlooking St. Ives Bay in West Cornwall. During the winter
months, we were rarely able to leave the house by the front door, as the prevailing north
easterly winds made opening said door a Herculean and foolhardy task. November to
March; back door: April to October; front door. Although we lived on the mainland, I always
felt we were somehow on the edge and removed from the centre of it all. I loved it.
Many of my family were accomplished amateur artists and childhood weekends were
spent out on the cliffs and dunes sketching and painting. My mother readily admitted to not
being able to draw a stick figure but loved these trips, as they were a chance to get away
from the hubbub of the town's narrow, cobbled streets and the bright lights of the harbour
front. Man's Head, Clodgy, Porth Kidney, Zennor. Picnic lunch packed and painting gear
stowed away, we set out on foot. My parents didn't drive and so our final destinations were
limited to distances small legs could manage. Our annual summer holidays followed a
similar vein but saw us heading off the mainland to the Isles of Scilly; a stunning
archipelago off the Cornish coast. I couldn't have been happier and I never wanted to
leave.
Auchagallon Stone Circle
On sharing our plans to move to Arran with family and friends, the responses were
invariably positive. All, however were caveated by concerns about the infamous Scottish
weather. Like most Brits I have a healthy interest in looking at the day's weather forecast
but I am by no means preoccupied by it being fair. I am a winter girl and am never happier
than when layered up in wax jacket, scarf and hat. I love the smart of the wind on my face,
the taste of the salt on my lips and the sting of my skin when I return inside from the cold.
As an artist, I am far more inspired by autumn and winter than I am by spring and summer:
blue-black, bruised skies, laden with rain clouds, the tans and golds of the dying bracken
and the way dusk drops heavy as lead.
After leaving Cornwall in my late teens, I subsequently moved around a great deal,
especially in latter years; a combination of the demands of my husband's job and my
restlessness. Moving house is, I understand, said to be one of life's most stressful events
but I have never found it so. A change of scene and the possibilities of the unknown
appeal to me greatly and as an artist, fresh inspiration has always been a strong pull. I
have been blessed to have lived in some beautiful places and apart from a couple of
sojourns inland, have always settled by the water. With each move, however, I carried with
me that ever present itch to live not just by the sea but surrounded by sea, off the
mainland on an island. Only decades on, in moving here to Arran, have I finally scratched
that itch.
We have settled on the quiet west coast of the island, up a winding, unsealed track that
wends its way past a Neolithic stone circle. Our house, perched on the hillside, looks
across to the wide sweep of the Kilbrannan Sound to the far shore of the Kintyre
Peninsula. My light drenched studio looks out to sea and I sit and watch the light dance on
the water, the clouds chase across the sky and I am totally absorbed by the ever-changing
vista. As dusk falls I watch for the first blink of the lighthouse on Davaar Island that marks
the mouth of Campbeltown Loch and I am brought full circle back to the child who sat in a
window seat, watching another light blink its warning; Godrevy Lighthouse off St. Ives
Bay.
I grew up with a very deep-rooted sense of what home was supposed to mean. My parents
had never lived anywhere but St. Ives and held a love for the place and our family house
that was unshakeable. They simply couldn't and wouldn't contemplate living anywhere
else. Somehow, this sense of belonging and being rooted to a place escaped me. For me,
home became more about the people I lived with than a particular house or place. As I've
grown older though, I have felt a slowly growing need to settle, to ground myself in one
place. Moving to Arran has been a deliberate sea-change.
The stone circle that I pass each day, as I climb up and down the track to our house has
stood for over 4,000 years. I think of the hands that hefted these stones in to place and
what its completion meant to those that laboured on it and lived near it. The circle is made
up of 15 standing stones. There are gaps where previous stones may have stood but of
those silent sentinels that remain, 13 are formed of red sandstone and two of granite. Red
sandstone dominates the buildings on Arran, less so granite but granite is the common
building stone of my Cornish birthplace. The symbolism of this joining of my past and
present resonates with me deeply. In moving here to Arran, in settling here above this
ancient circle of stones I feel I have become part of something bigger than myself. I have
found a place to belong, a place that my restless, gypsy heart can finally call home.
The track up to my studio
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