This painting is of a small town beside a loch on the west coast of Scotland. I was driving up from lancashire on the way to Islay, which is a small island off the west coast of Scotland that is famous for very peaty/smokey whiskey. There's a small bridge that has a single road on it so you have to stop for a while while traffic comes in the opposite direction. If you like Smokey whiskey, Islay is a fabulous place and the journey there (car and ferry) is very beautiful. This stop at the bridge is part of probably one of the most beautiful parts of the journey. I was attracted by the idea of painting a town and these large fishing boats as being dominated by these huge hills, clouds and the loch (lake). I work for a company that makes off road vehicles, and when you're in one of those you catch yourself feeling like you're in control of nature because you can drive over it. However, in certain places in the world, you get the complete opposite sensation.

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I actually painted in the cars I was driving at the time in the car park, and i'm standing on the pier.

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From a practical perspective, I liked that this didn't require much use of green (I hate green paint) as it was mainly tertiary colours and greys.

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This took a huge amount of time to paint because up until this time i'd never attempted my detailed style on a large scale and I didn't adjust my approach. I lost interest after a few months having painted the top half of the painting (clouds, mountains, village and pier) because most of that is actually very boring to paint. I left it for several months with no progress, almost giving up. When I finally got my second rush of adrenaline, the picture had actually accumulated a layer of dust which actually got mixed in in certain areas when I was painting the lake.