A HAUL OF HERRING AND A PILOT BOAT

I anticipate no gasps of utter astonishment when I reveal that the latest works to appear in the Tait Gallery are both seascapes.  They were both commissioned.

One of them is the third in a series featuring the Gamrie dual-purpose boat "Silver Wave" (BF372).  She is pictured hauling a good shot of herring, attended by the ubiquitous flocks of gannets, fulmars and gulls, as the crew perform the back-breaking operation of getting the heavy shot aboard.

The other painting is of the Lerwick pilot boat "Knab", viewed from the headland from which her name derives, as she re-enters the harbour after performing another "escort" duty.  This was the first of two vessels to bear the name, built in the late 1980s and replaced by a more powerful state-of-the-art version around 2005 (I'm not sure of my exact dates here!).

I'm currently working on a painting of the local tall ship "Swan".  I'd originally planned to have prints of this ready for my first pre-Christmas stall at Lerwick's Toll Clock Centre on Saturday 17th November.  It now looks as though I'll miss my own deadline by a week or two, but I should have the giclees available by the end of the month.  Watch this space!