But is it "art"

Jack had his desk and typewriter set up in one of the downstairs sitting rooms and now it was time for me to set up a studio. I had chosen one of the upstairs bedrooms - slanted walls under the eaves and painted pink with bright red geraniums on the windowsills. I never had a studio before and it sounded daunting actually - but we had the room so why not call it that?

Over the years I had done a few oils and an acrylic painting or two - but never took any art classes so I really didn't know what I was doing. However, I had never let that stop me (I usually do one of something - quilt making, petit pointe etc. and then stop while I'm ahead). So this time it was water color. I had the paint and a book on technique that I'd bought in Edinburgh so I was ready.(?) I started out just playing with color and value, then did the Tanera painting in sepia. By this time I'd decided that what I really wanted to do was to draw people in the village doing things - working mostly. So I started to do sketches using photographs - and found that it was possible to draw people who were recognizable as themselves so it would be fun to hang the paintings in the cottage and see what the reaction would be. Definitely not art - but interesting as illustration. Besides I was having great fun doing something I'd always dreamed of doing.

I worked at the paintings and some pen and ink sketches off and on over the three years we spent in Coigach. The problem was that I never wanted to part with those pictures. I believe that even then, I was thinking just maybe, they could be used as book illustrations some day. Lucky thing - both because that's exactly what we've done so many years later - and because much of what I recorded then of the life in the village is now long gone. But the memories are still bright.