'Arisaig to Durness: A Journey of Memories' - 4th to 26th June, Castle Gallery, Inverness

Landscape painting in oil and mixed media inspired by many years of my visits to the west coast of Scotland and the memories from those visually stunning places.

This will be a particularly personal solo show for me as I remember visiting Knoydart in the Scottish Highlands over 20 years ago. 

I got in the car and drove to Mallaig and it was my first visit to Scotland. Driving through Glencoe in the middle of the night I already knew that I was somewhere special. I got out of the car and walked around in the pitch black and saw the most spectacular stars.

The next day, in the morning light, Knoydart was incredible. I was almost emotional. I had never witnessed such a beautiful landscape. From that moment I was hooked.

I’ve since visited the North West tip of Scotland many, many times discovering new locations on and off the beaten track. It’s almost 200 miles between Arisaig, which is on the peninsula south of Loch Morar, to Durness, which is about as far north as you can get. It’s been inhabited (sparsely!) since the stone age and the coastline feels very much of another age. It’s a magical place to sit and sketch and paint for hours on end.

I’m a process-based painter, and I’m equally inspired by — and in awe of — the abstract works of Ian Davenport and Callum Innes.  For me as a painter, I feel very much that my mission is to push the boundaries of what paint can do in relation to capturing a landscape. 

What we think has been created with a brush or paints is actually maybe something else entirely.

Capturing a moment on a canvas and creating a painting that resonates is something I am passionate, perhaps even obsessive, about. 

When you are watching a landscape, it’s not a still landscape, it always changes with a different light on it every second — it is this that I am trying to capture in a painting. 

From a stormy sea, a movement of clouds, a soft and subtle light moving across the sea to the coastline. A landscape is always in flux and changing and it's this ‘moment’, that split second, I am trying to capture.

To be able to feel like you're in that landscape is something really important to me as a painter.

The collection I’ve curated for this show hopefully showcases the very best of one of my favourite coastlines and in particular Arisaig to Durness. 

You can view all works in this show here on the Castle Gallery website.

View/download an invite to the show.

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Shazia Mahmood completed her M.A. at Winchester School of Art in 1997 and now lives in Sussex, although she has a particular affinity with the landscape of Northwest Scotland. ​Shazia enjoys being outdoors and making sketches en plein air. She has developed a unique style of painting which combines inks and oil paint on canvas to capture rapidly changing light and weather conditions. She is a dedicated and passionate painter and it is for this reason that her work will stand the test of time.