Susan Dobson; moor and mountain landscapes

Images (from top):
Susan Dobson's Himalaya, available from Blurb;
The Buachailles, Head of Glencoe;
Buttermere from Haystacks, Cumbria

That soaring feeling when the sky is blue and the high fells are frosted. Backlit herdies on deep frosted fields in the valley. Smoke from chimneys floating on the ice cold air. Last of the autumn colour from the bracken in the slanting sunlight. A gift of a day after weeks of grey damp. Silence apart from the running beck. Sheer delight. Borrowdale, Honister, 29 November 2019

Flying in to Kathmandu - all blue sky, building purple-grey cloud and haze over patchwork landscape - straining to see the mountains. You know they are there and gradually they resolve out of the clouds, range upon range of snowy peaks delineated by the afternoon sun - magnificent even at this distance - our goal for the next few weeks!

A wall of snow topped peaks, massive, solid, floating on a sea of cloud. Spindrift spiralling off the highest peaks in plumes. Are they in touch with the earth? So massive yet so insubstantial supported on this illusion of a landscape of cloud and haze. Annapurna Journal, 1 February 2011

I make drawings and watercolours in the landscape - in wild and often remote and challenging mountain areas. Wherever I am working, the drawings become meditations on the form and structure of mountain landscapes. Using watercolour, oils and printmaking processes, in particular monotype and etching, I transform and translate them into images which evoke a strong sense of place and recall the experience of being there.

"It just reminds me of being there – the weather, knowing how it feels, what a long slog it will be walking through the wet, but how wonderful it will be when you get up there." Dave Bishop, studio visitor and climber

Susan’s feeling for the mood and atmosphere of a place shines through all her work, whether it be the remote wildness of Himalayan peaks and valleys, the high mountains of The Alps and Dolomites, the Cumbria mountains and fells or the Highlands and Islands of North West Scotland.

Site design and maintenance by Dave Baker

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