Jolomo - John Lowrie Morrison

John Lowrie Morrison has painted the west coast of Scotland since the early 1960’s. He paints the light of the west - the light that bathes the Inner & Outer Hebrides. He uses strong colour to express that light and sees his paintings – not in the traditional chiaroscuro of light and dark -  but in darkness versus colour, which is what his painting is about: an allegorical description of the human spirit.

Although Morrison studied Drawing and Painting at the Glasgow School of Art, his roots are in the Outer Hebrides – Kyles. Isle of Harris – where family cousins still work and live. Many childhood visits to family on Skye at Portnalong gave him a love of the croft. 

Morrison records the human imprint on Argyll and the Isles and informs his paintings by a study of the geography, history, geology and - most of all - folklore of a particular area.

Simple human imprints have always been important to him: the pole next to the croft, carrying power or phone lines; the gate from croft to shore or runrigs, the ladder constantly leaning against the croft wall – signifying the constant struggle against water and wind. And of course the peat stack – becoming rarer and rarer as island families rely less on peat.