Cloud Mountain exhibition – guess where? Oban Mountain Rescue

‘I grew up looking towards Ben Cruachan, its image and shape are intrinsic to my sense of home and my roots. 

‘The outdoors is where I revel, climbing to the tops in all seasons, feeling the grandeur and age, and the land spreading out on all sides. Feeling part of the wind and the clouds, the strength and peace in these places. The journey is important, and the resulting work can encompass more than a single place, reflecting movement and time spent travelling.

‘It is the land, in its might and beauty, it ferocity and calm, that causes me to wonder at the place I call home.

‘My recent work is pared down. Simple lines: pathways feet have taken, outlines of mountains, trees passed. Tokens of places seen and travelled to’.

This is artist Lizzie Rose, whose exhibition, Cloud Mountain previews on 12th August and runs from 13th-16th August at the Oban Mountain Rescue Post in Sinclair Drive, Oban – from 10.00am to 6.00pm daily.

Everything about this exhibition comes back to mountains – they inhabit the imagination of the artist, they draw her regularly to their tops, she is a full member of Oban Mountain Rescue, she is exhibiting at their base and she is donating 10% commission form all sales during the exhibition to the Oban Mountain Rescue Team Funds.

The exhibition is part of Artmap Argyll Open Studios 2010, a standing collaboration of artists in Argyll, jointly promoting and marketing their work.

As well as mountains, Lizzie Rose’s life has been shaped by Loch Awe – but here she seems to be encompassing the loch.

Born in Oban in 1972, she grew up at Sonachan House on the South East side of Loch Awe. Now she is based in Kilchrenan on the north west side of the loch.

She graduated from art school in 1995, in Newcastle upon Tyne, one of the most restlessly inventive cultures in the UK and one that has pioneered a broad spectrum of initiatives reinforcing the centrality of creativity to life.

Since then she has been exhibiting her work locally, nationally and internationally – and, since 1999, getting into Adventure Racing. This has seen her compete for three successive years in the Hebridean Challenge (The Heb) and, in 2009, captaining a team in the Adventure Racing World Championships in Portugal.

So what’s Adventure Racing? Take a deep breath and read abut the Hebridean Challenge. It’s a week-long relay race covering the length of the Hebridean Islands and involves hill running, road running, road and mountain biking, sea swimming and sea kayaking. So there. So enviably fit.

You start to put a picture together of Lizzie Rose – someone who is inextricably bound to Scotland’s nature, who moves through it purposefully and at leisure and who responds to its prompts, challenges and seductions in the art she creates.

A mischievous thought occurs. Given the sheer energy that must invest her life, does she create her artworks at speed? If so -what about a marathon paint-off between herself and John Lowrie Morrison, Argyll’s internationally collected colourist known for his own speed across the canvas? A sort of ‘They shoot horses, don’t they’ – for artists and for charity.

We’re now off to take a cold bath. The infection of mountains, rescues, adventure racing and art has obviously blown a fuse somewhere important.

The main thing is to drop in to the Oban Mountain Rescue Post in Sinclair Drive in Oban, experience Lizzie Roses Cloud Mountain exhibition and test your own fuses afterwards.

The image accompanying this article – Pale Peaks – is copyrighted to the artist, Lizzie Rose and may not be reproduced without permission.