Bethan Verity

This project focuses on Ardnamurchan, a remote peninsula on the west coast of Scotland. The name Ardnamurchan comes from the Gaelic ‘Àird nam Murchan’ and translates as the ‘headland of the great seas’. It juts into the Atlantic at the most westerly point of the British mainland and is exposed to severe weather conditions. There is a lighthouse at the end of the peninsula that looks across to the outer isles and the small isles of Muck, Rhum and Eigg. Despite not being an island, Ardnamurchan can feel just as remote as it can only be accessed by boat or two hours of never-ending single-track road. For those who live there, it can feel like the edge of the world.  

I have lived in Ardnamurchan, and I know it as a place of untamed wildness. I have sat on headlands as the crashing waves come rolling in from the Minch. I have watched as the rain sweeps through, obliterating from view the land that lies in its way. This is an ever-changing wild place. Yet paradoxically, the rocky landscape is eternally the same, a piece of land carved out by a volcano centuries ago. Bog and heather, rock, croft land and weathered oaks, the place teeters on the brink of wilderness. But when the storm is past, and the sea calms to glass with the sky an eternal blue, it is the place where peace resides.  This is Ardnamurchan, and the collection represents both the peace and wild nature of this place, bringing both into the home.