On a 2016 visit to Achmelvich in the Scottish Highlands, I noticed a colossal boulder hanging off a cliff. This richly coloured, weather smoothed block of Lewisian Gneiss was over twice my height and wider than my outstretched arms. It clung to a sheer face of stone, with nothing but fresh air beneath it. I spent a long time pondering this stone, wondering how long it had been this way, when it would fall, and what new seams of erosion would be opened when it departed the cliff. I made a drawing of this stone – the tension of the sight was captivating. I remember wondering if it might fall while I was drawing, expecting that the added weight of my attention would be enough to topple it.
I was in my 3rd year of studying Fine Art in Dundee. I had only recently tuned in to a latent interest in geology, having made my first densely observed drawings of stone at the end of the previous term. In trying to articulate this fascination, I pointed to the apparent timelessness of stone – observing the passing of human civilisation unblinking and unchanged.
In 2023, I visited Achmelvich again – making a point to return to see if the boulder desperately clung on. It had fallen. It now lay at the foot of the face, leaning back into the cliff and displaying a stark blue-white scar where the weight of the fall had chipped the block. I was surprised and absolutely delighted to have witnessed this relatively significant chunk of erosion during a short period of my lifetime.
This moment became the key to understanding my magnetic attraction to stone. A deep, focussed and peaceful act of noticing can be achieved over the course of making a drawing. By repeating this again and again, I have found that my true joy in observing stone is not its unblinking, unchanging stasis – rather it’s the fact that stone is alive. It is far too easy to read the face of the earth as static due to our limited scope of a human lifetime. However, by engaging in deep observation one can see stone as it erodes and is rebuilt in new forms, one can watch the continents collide and drift apart. The spectacular story of a hot rock in space which bears all of this life is not something that happens outside our experience – it is taking place in front of us.
I believe there is value in the passive, peaceful activity of noticing – value for our fraught 21st century brains and value for our overworked and underappreciated, underrepresented landscapes.