Gorm an Fheòir/ The Blue of the Grass: A Reflective Essay by Erin Scott

Danielle Macleod’s exhibition, Gorm an Fheòir/ The Blue of the Grass, focuses on Macleod’s intimate relationship to the land, animals, and plants of her homeland, on the Isle of Lewis. What began as a process of learning the traditional usage of the plants on her croft, later became an investigation into using these plants for cyanotype photography processes as a context for her land-based spirituality and worldview. Cyanotype is an interesting process of developing photographs using a combination of iron salt solutions and UV light. It often yields a gorgeous blue image, hence the term ‘cyan’ within the name of the nature-based photographic process. For Macleod, her own spiritual relationship with the land informs a large part of her artistic practice, and while she presents these pieces in photography form, she also includes sculptural and wearable pieces that are featured in the photographs. All these wearable pieces are made from the land as well, whether that be a shell headpiece or the incredible feature piece of highland cow horns that create a sea creature like mask.

One of the aspects I find most interesting is how Macleod places a figure, that of a man, within these scenes she creates for photographing. Some of the images are incredibly intimate, to the point where you can see the goosebumps across the woman’s back as shadows of plants cast across her tingling skin. In others, the man is wearing a work suit, the type you wear for welding. There is a clear relationship between the human, its mechanical contributions to land practices, and the land itself. In just one image of the collection, Macleod has no human figure, just a roadway amongst the hills. I interpret this to be a statement about the land as its own figure: an entity that does not need humans to be alive and valuable. In many ways, the figure of the male throughout is in relation to the land but does not overwhelm it with his presence. Instead, his face is obscured in every image, often by the use of the sculptural land-masks. What results is a human with a non-human face; a new shape arising that better portrays the interrelational and interconnected way that Macleod, and arguably many Gaels, feel towards the land, its plants, and animals. The human is not necessarily secondary to the land but instead, a growing and evolving part of it.

The linguistic aspect of this work that I find fascinating is Macleod’s title Gorm an Fheòir/ The Blue of the Grass. While the typical assumption for many English speakers is that grass is green, and indeed in Scotland it can be extra green at certain times of the year, the Gàidhlig word gorm is quite intricate. Gorm is a word that means blue, but it also means natural green, as in green that is only created in the natural world. The word uaine means green in any form that is manmade, including the green of nature captured in a photograph. In this context then, Macleod plays off the word gorm for its double meaning by photographing what would be green grass and using the blues of cyanotype photo processing to create a collection of photographs that reveal the blue of the grass. The cyanotype and the plant toners she used also created light red and yellow photographs. By using natural plant-based processes to create the photographs of the grass, Macleod maintains the word gorm’s meaning doubly: the grass becomes blue through this natural dye process, but it also captures the green of the word gorm in its honouring of the natural toners and sun-based photo processing involved in cyanotype. In this unique way, and only through cyanotype as process, can Macleod create a green photograph that is gorm. Again, Macleod is prioritizing her land-based practices and presenting these practices visually and linguistically as they arise from her homelands on Lewis, in the Gàidhealtachd.

As an exhibition, Gorm an Fheòir/ The Blue of the Grass both emplaces itself within the land of Lewis, but also arises from a collaboration with the plants used as chemical toners and the shells, horns, and grasses that comprise the masks worn in the images and displayed on the walls. This collection of work speaks to an incredible sense of place within the self, and within the histories of the lands and waters that Macleod calls home. It also speaks to a specific Gàidhlig way of seeing and being that is relational to language, place, and process. This is a striking collection of work in both aesthetic considerations and cultural vibrancy. I have no doubt that Macleod will be a strong contributing voice to the future of arts on the Isle of Lewis, and of recognition for the rich cultural and artistic values of the Gàidhealtachd, well beyond the Outer Hebrides.