Skye on Canvas: Ellis O’Connor and the Island’s Creative Weather

It’s not only the scenery that stops you. There’s a current of creative energy on Skye that pulls through the island’s studios, galleries, and workspaces—many of them tucked into old croft houses, roadside sheds or contemporary cabins looking out to sea. To drive across Skye is to move through an informal but living gallery. You’ll pass honesty boxes of hand-thrown ceramics, signs for working potteries, converted barns holding small exhibitions, and, occasionally, works made in the field—literally.

Among the most distinctive of Skye’s artists is Ellis O’Connor, whose studio sits near the southern edge of the island, in Drumfearn. Her work is made with the landscape. Wind, rain and sea are part of the process—physical and visible in every canvas. She paints outdoors in winter, sometimes in storms, chasing the movement of weather with broad brush strokes and layered oils. Her canvasses are large, abstract, and unapologetically expressive.