Winged Victory 2024

198th Annual Exhibition of the Royal Scottish Academy 2024

91 cm H, 147 cm W

Pencil on paper

“Winged Victory” is a diptych drawing in pencil on paper, a study of a sheer rock face in a disused granite quarry at Tormore on the extreme west of the Isle of Mull in the Inner Hebrides. Here the granite is a distinctive iron ore red in colour. It is sharp and fissile, carrying on its surface the marks of geological time, of melt and cleave. In the 19th century Ross of Mull Granite, at once durable and decorative, was put to use across the world as pavements and docks, lighthouses and monuments. The canopy that shelters Prince Albert in his memorial in Kensington Gardens is held aloft by columns from the quarry at Tormore, sent south by sea from the Ross of Mull via the Sound of Iona.