Alchemy

Rebecca Styles’ series of large-scale paintings have been created onsite at Baile na Cille Church over several weeks, in the company of Scottish poet Heather Mackay Young, whose writings respond to the immediate environment and artwork being created there. With the decaying beauty of the ancient church in mind, the generations that have worshiped there over the centuries, and the relentless and unforgiving seasonality of the Western Isles, the work of both these artists reflects the circularity of all things - of life, death and rebirth - through her use of the materials such as flax, bone, ash and earth on linen canvas.

As the paintings evolved, on the floor or hung from the walls of the church, elements of the building’s very fabric made their way into the work of both the painter and the poet. The addition of gold leaf makes reference to the religious and art historical concept of the church icon, whilst playing on the sociological opposites of gold against the rawness of earth, ash and bone, or what Rebecca describes as “all of nature, but not as equals. Would there be golden icons without stone, lime, horsehair, rust, wood and slate to house them, without this sacred building, pulled out of the ground, like the earth pigments used to make these paintings?”