"My feeling for the hills is what makes me paint. All of the turns I have taken so far on my life’s journey, all of the places I have visited and all the mountains I have seen lead me back to the Cairngorms, those blue hills of my childhood.
I can make comparisons between them and other mountain landscapes I have visited in Scotland, England, Europe and Scandinavia. I can talk about the history of the place where I grew up, the changes of use the land has undergone and the way decisions made by our forebears many years ago affect our relationship with the landscape today. I can discuss forestry, tourism, population, and my concerns for the ecology of the area. I can mention how my childhood in the lee of the mountains inspired my interest in botany, fungi, fauna and folklore, and how the Gaelic names for the places I love validate my interest in colour and shape, and in the simplification of things. All this feeds into my experience of the landscape.
But when I paint I simplify. To me the mountains represent endurance through time. The act of looking at them slows my mind. It allows me to accept mystery. It makes me experience time in terms of geology. It is like swimming in a cold loch, when all you know is the water. Looking at the mountain empties my mind of everything but the mountain."
Jane MacNeill, Culloden, October 2023