Sunday Guest Post - Vicky Stonebridge!

Not only is our guest contributor Scottish but she's probably one of the busiest people I've ever met and yet she still found time to paint us this wonderful painting!



It’s quite an honour for me to be asked to guest here as I suffer from that familiar artists affliction of not being good enough, not being a proper artist, illustrator, painter, potter, tea cosy knitter whatever. Specialisation was never a North west coast option, with no jobs, crèches, transport, shops or handy skips, one has to bodge, adapt and make do. This I think is why I find myself spread so thin between event organising (especially Hi Ex), youth work, craft making, painting, fire fighting, teaching etc etc. so many hats to wear and never time to worry about whether they fit. The good thing about this is that life is never boring! I also like that all the different jobs need a different part of my brain; highland cow and sheep painting for the tourist demand uses the cynical part of my brain, crafting is therapeutic, teaching keeps me on my toes, comic strips stretch my technical skills, painting figurative or landscape canvases uses the manic obsessive part and so on. But somewhere in there lost in the bustle of grown up life is a pantheon of characters from folklore, animals and small people who just want to play in the lost corners of the highland landscape.

As a youngling I made, painted (and saw) fairies all the time, but of course teachers and college would have none of such whimsy. Little did we know how mainstream and popular they would become, horrible naked bad taste glittery gifs adorning a thousand myspace pages and bad tattoo blogs, I could have made a fortune if I’d stuck with fairies, but they ran away from me and became tamed, no longer the malevolent creatures hiding in remote glens which I’d carried charms against as a girl. So it is with trepidation that I now have a go at fairies, they are from a playful childish place, mermaids, kelpies and big cats lurk in the darker places, just left of the accounts, behind the housework and often at www.balnacra.com.

Many thanks Vicky! And remember that anybody can take part in Scotch Corner and become a guest contributor (yes, we mean you reading this!) so click here and take part!