Artist, Liz Myhill, recently completed a year in residence on the Trust’s Rahoy Hills reserve. In this guest blog, Liz reflects on her time on the reserve and shares some of her wildlife inspiration and encounters.

I first arrived at the Scottish Wildlife Trust Rahoy Hills Reserve in the sleepy lull of a glorious midsummer afternoon to begin a year long project as Artist in Residence. Tucked among the hills of the Morvern peninsula, which lies between the Sound of Mull and Ardnamurchan, the reserve has a modest and unassuming outward face. The single track road which leads to Lochaline village and the ferry to Mull gives only a fleeting glimpse of the reserve, but even from here there is a sense of entering a different and unusual place.

To fully appreciate the size and diversity of the reserve (one of the largest managed by the Trust) I made my way along Loch Arienas, a freshwater loch which bounds its southern edge. From here the views across the reserve took my breath away, in both scale and diversity. High basalt topped hills surrounded by crags and cliffs, an expansive upland network of burns, lochans, peat and grassland, then down steep slopes past river gorges and finally plunging through ancient Atlantic temperate rainforest which crowds down to the very edge of the loch. It was both an exciting and slightly daunting prospect.

So what exactly does an Artist in Residence do? It’s a widely varied role but in this case I was fortunate enough to have a very open remit. I would explore and respond to the reserve through drawing and painting and hopefully raise awareness and funds to help support the work being carried out there.

I love to be outside surrounded by wildlife and the landscape, so most of my work is made right there and then, in a single sitting whilst I am in the midst of my subject. This certainly has its challenges and there is nothing like the sight of fast-approaching rainclouds to get me working quickly. It has been a natural progression to want to collaborate with conservation organisations and I hope that this work can have a positive impact. So I was delighted that with this residency I would be able to work closely with Steve Hardy, the Rahoy Hills ranger who has been at the reserve for nearly 25 years and whose knowledge, company and enthusiasm were absolutely invaluable. Thanks are also very much due to Anna Raven for boundless enthusiasm and providing the perfect base from which to explore.

It’s hard to know where to begin to describe my visits to Rahoy, taken over the course of a full year. There have been so many precious moments as I came to explore different parts of the reserve and discover some of its hidden treasures. It is a place in which I enjoyed forgetting about time and allowing my surroundings to envelop me. Entering the cool green dappled light of an ancient oak woodland on a hot day and sitting by a burn watching dragonflies and damselflies whizzing along in a blur of iridescent wings. Up at the highest point of the reserve, on hands and knees, appreciating the miniature beauty of Arctic alpine plants that cling on there. Or watching black throated divers preening from the shores of Loch Arienas, red deer stags bellowing in the autumn rut, fledgling ravens leaving the nest for their first flights and badgers snuffling among roots.

One of the beautiful things about sitting still for a long time, as I do when drawing or painting, is the unexpected encounters that occur. It’s in these moments of stillness that I can watch animal behaviour that is completely natural and undisturbed by my presence. Sometimes it will be only a fleeting glimpse, but other times an enchanting or dramatic story unfolds. And by spending a long time in one spot there is also the temptation to understand my surroundings in more detail, such as the fascinating variety of lichens, mosses and flowers in all colours, shapes and sizes to be found around a single fallen log or nestling brightly into a rocky crevice.

Getting to know such a large, diverse area and understanding some of its complexity was something I very much wanted to delve into. Over the course of several walks around the reserve with Steve, I was able to build up a more complete picture of what makes Rahoy such a special place. His knowledge and care for the reserve, the conservation concerns it faces, and his outlook for a future that supports and nurtures the natural world was hugely inspiring. Not to mention a ready source of suggestions as to where I might find interesting subjects to draw.

My days at the reserve followed a similar pattern, up and out as early as possible, returning at the end of long but intensely satisfying days. Backpack is laden down with art materials, binoculars, food and water, a drawing board tucked under one arm or strapped onto the pack. I might have a specific area of the reserve that I intend to visit on that day but very rarely a fixed idea of what I hope to draw there. This is where luck and chance play their part. It might be a play of light across the landscape that catches my eye, chancing upon a dipper bobbing up and down in a fast-flowing peaty stream which makes an irresistible subject, or simply the fact that I stop to sit and rest a while then notice something that I want to draw.

It is often a bit of a frenzy, especially with wildlife, to try and get something down on paper before my subject disappears from view. I like the movement that this brings to the drawing, it may not be in perfect detail but I hope to convey something of those moments in time and a sense of place. And when I look back through my drawings, paintings and sketchbooks they take me straight back in time, the sights, sounds, smell, the atmosphere. I hope for anyone else looking at them, that they share some of the joy and delight to be found in the natural world.

And so now my days at Rahoy Hills are complete and I sift through all the work made there. Some are complete and finished in their own right, others will form the starting point for developing ideas in the studio, using printmaking and maybe some larger scale paintings. It will be a continuation of the journey but not the end. I’m certain of one thing, which is that I will be returning to this very precious reserve again to seek a few more of its hidden treasures.

You can listen to an interview with Liz on the Scotland Outdoors podcast here.

Works from the Trust’s Rahoy Hills Reserve will be on show at Gallery An Talla Dearg, Isle Ornsay, Isle of Skye from Friday 4 – Wednesday 23 October 2024 as well as being available at on Liz’s website. A portion of proceeds from the sale of these works will go to Scottish Wildlife Trust.