We see this tripartite division in South Light (p. 158), North Hart Law (p. 165), Winter Gate (p. 167 left) and Snowfield. In these pictures, too, the sky is often dark, even black above the hills, while beneath lies the more richly coloured pattern of fields. With the dark above, light and colour below, these pictures illustrate magnificently this landscape’s antisyzygy, the accommodation of opposites within a single identity. Called the Caledonian Antisyzygy, this is thought to be part of the Scots character. As we see it here, it is perhaps also a characteristic of the Scottish landscape.
Here and elsewhere, fences are an important part of the history written on the hills, but fences need gates, and gates as they are seen in Moor Gate (pp. 148–9), Winter Gate and Dark Gate – Lammermuir (p. 155), for instance, are a striking feature of these works. They are also a link with Rae’s earlier pictures of Spanish doors, and so with the vital, poetic quality of such pictures as the astonishing Priestlaw. Here, as throughout her art, Rae has taken account of the freedoms of Abstract Expressionism, but has harnessed them with great originality to explore the complex poetry of the real.
Ten years before she turned for inspiration to the Lammermuirs, Rae had found an even more ancient landscape in Orkney. These islands are rich in neolithic sites, and paintings such as Steness Fields (p. 43) and Yesnaby (p. 48) bear witness to the interest Orkney landscapes hold for her. She reflects, however, that so far she has not produced a major set of Orkney pictures. This suggests that perhaps the frequent visits she makes to the places of her choice offer her more than the convenience of familiarity. Rather, they involve getting to grips with the landscape’s story in some deeper way. This is certainly apparent in the remarkable work that she has made in County Mayo on the west coast of Ireland.
Rae has visited Mayo almost annually since 2002 and the ancient landscape of its wild Atlantic coast has proved a rich
Fences and gates feature as significantly in these pictures as in the Lammermuir paintings. They are prominent, for instance, if clearly ramshackle, in Red Moor (p. 87), Benaadereen – New Fence (p. 72) and The New Fence (above). The latter records the artist’s disappointment at the farmer’s improvements to a dilapidated fence she had enjoyed drawing. The fields defined by these markers are modern cultivation, but the Céide Fields themselves are an extensive neolithic system of stone dykes that was found buried beneath deep layers of peat. Built around 6,000 years ago to retain cattle, these walls are among the earliest physical witnesses anywhere to the first farmers. The Céide Fields are recognisable in the painting Red Ceide (p. 82) and in several other pictures, too, but the patterns of the modern fields still echo this ancient system; as she painted them, Rae was moved by the extraordinary continuity of this landscape. There are also other monuments and ancient signs of human presence here. Ceanthru Thaidhg (2011), for instance, and the monotype Belmulletfields (2008), both show views out to sea over the ridges of a medieval strip-farming system, while the subject of Dark Signs (p. 66) is a graveyard in which a tall neolithic menhir stands among the graves, symbol of how far this extraordinary landscape reaches back into prehistory. Opposite: North Hart Law
inspiration to her. The large paintings Downpatrick Late Sky and Gate to the Bay (both 2002) were the result of her first visits and represent the view from what she calls ‘my favourite site at Céide Fields, as I look out across the bay to Downpatrick Head and the impressive sea stack, Dun Briste, that is its neighbour’.4 In Exit (p. 81), the cliffs, seen across the dark blue waters of the bay, and the fields in the foreground are clearly recognisable. Sanctuary (p. 88) is the same place, but Downpatrick Head is a bird sanctuary. Hence the picture’s title and the kittiwakes and fulmars that nest on the cliffs soaring across it.
take temperatures for a spring day to over 50C – with lethal consequences for the population.
The Concordia temperature jump was the most emphatic sign that Antarctica is now starting to melt. Across the continent, the environment is being reshaped. Ice is disappearing, penguin colonies have started to decline and some have vanished, while shellfish, krill populations and fish stocks are suffering. Even more worrying has been the destabilisation of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. The glaciers here had remained in a sturdy condition until relatively recently but they now show disturbing signs of damage as warming ocean waters lap their bases, eat away at their foundations and threaten their disintegration. Should these giant fields of ice collapse, the knock-on effects could devastate the planet, for they contain enough ice, if turned to water, to raise ocean levels by five metres. A third of the
world’s population – from New York to Mumbai to Shanghai – could find their homes at risk.
That kind of cataclysm is unlikely to affect the planet for some decades. Nevertheless, the signs are ominous. Antarctica may be the continent least vulnerable to global warming, but it is clearly not impregnable. The last bastion of resistance to climate change is crumbling and when it falls, it will not return, a point summed up by the US environment writer Elizabeth Kolbert. ‘Once the world’s remaining mountain glaciers disappear, they won’t be coming back. Nor will the coral reefs or the Amazon rainforest. If we cross the tipping point for the Greenland ice sheet, we may not even notice. And the world as we know it will be gone.’1
We stand at a perilous juncture. Change is coming and those who chronicle that transformation face awesome challenges. Barbara Rae is well placed to confront them. As an artist who has concerned herself with temporal shifts as well as geographical transpositions, she has made it her business to seek out places that face some of the strongest environmental pressures on the planet. Ironically, her task –in one sense – is being made easier. As the world warms, so the polar ice melts and sailing through channels and straits that were once blocked for most of the year becomes easier. It is a mixed blessing.
One thing is clear: the Earth is opening up in every sense as we continue to press ahead with a global scientific experiment whose outcome is going to have profound consequences for future generations of our species. The world has never changed at this rate throughout human history and those who follow its trajectory do so at a momentous time.
