Fair Isle: An artistic journey to the edge of the world – Gael Hillyard

Join Gael Hillyard as she reflects on her journey to Britain’s most remote inhabited island, where she spent the winter capturing its raw beauty.

Fair Isle: An artistic journey to the edge of the world is an exhibition of work created during a two-month Winter residency on Fair Isle, one of Britain’s most remote inhabited islands. The collection comprises fifty pieces, including large-format watercolours, oil paintings, collages, night photographs, and written reflections. While the majority of the work was created on Fair Isle, several pieces are from Inverness, London, and Shetland.

This body of work is shaped by weather, solitude, and the slow unravelling of time. Fair Isle is not approached here as a static subject, but as something distant, mythic, half-known, and disappearing. Many paintings view the Isle from afar, as if arriving or leaving. These distant perspectives evoke something inward: a feeling of travelling to somewhere magical, with a sense that it would, or could, never be returned to. The Isle appears and disappears through veils of sea, light, and weather. Its scale is felt most strongly in its almost complete absence.

The watercolours respond to the Isle’s changing weather and light. Several were exposed to the elements and are marked by wind and rain, which have altered the surface. Oil paintings offer a slower, richer expression, carrying the weight of the Isle’s winter skies and seas, as well as the stillness that precedes and follows storms. In some works, the aurora borealis appears as something remembered, rather than copied. A small number of night photographs offer additional moments of stillness, capturing the dark threshold between weather and sky.

Collage is present in a few of the pieces, where found materials, stone, plant matter, and fleece are discreetly embedded into the texture of the works. These layered compositions reflect the ephemeral nature of memory and the dreamlike quality of long days combing the shorelines and fields. There are also fragments of maps and metals discovered in forgotten drawers after returning to the Inverness studio.

Short written reflections accompany the work, drawn from notes made during the residency. They speak quietly of exposure, ritual, uncertainty, and the comfort of repetition. The writing is not explanatory, but reflective, giving form to the inner experience of being alone with the elements.

Gael Hillyard’s practice is shaped by place and what it evokes: memory, arrival, departure, presence, and longing. She is drawn to edges, and to the sense of standing just outside something precious, watching it drift. Her work does not aim to capture a place, but to witness its resonance, especially in moments when it feels as though it is already slipping away.

The exhibition is both a record of arrival and a farewell. A limited-edition, hand-bound book, ‘Fair Isle Field Notes’, will accompany the exhibition; each copy will include a small original watercolour and a selection of writings from the residency.

Her Fair Isle Residency in November and December was immediately followed by a residency in January at The Booth, Scalloway, Shetland, managed by Wasps.

Gael Hillyard is a watercolour artist, oil painter, and creative workshop provider, with a studio at Wasps Inverness Creative Academy, where she has worked since 2019. She also keeps an office at Wasps for her writing practice.

Raised in a creative family, Gael spent much of her childhood in a large working studio where artistic expression was instinctive and encouraged daily. Her practice has been shaped by a lifetime of self-directed learning, guided by a deep sense of visual curiosity and intuitive discipline.

Before establishing her full-time studio practice in 2019, Gael worked across multiple sectors, combining strategic thinking with creative problem-solving. For twelve years, she managed the training of professional helicopter pilots, a role requiring precision, clarity, and adaptability. A desire to return to the creative world followed, and she created an interior design practice, which she later taught to international students for almost a decade.

Her artistic practice encompasses a range of media, including watercolour, oil, acrylic, ink, collage, and photography. Drawing on landscape, memory, light, and weather, Gael’s work often touches on subtle emotional undercurrents and the quiet intensity of solitude. She is known for her sensitive use of colour and atmosphere, and for exploring what lies just beyond the reach of language.

Gael has exhibited regularly, including numerous group exhibitions at Wasps Inverness Creative Academy, and has received support from Creative Scotland and Highland Council. She was awarded funding for Spirit:360 as part of Inverness Castle’s development. Her work is held in private collections throughout the United Kingdom and the USA.

She delivers thoughtful, well-structured workshops on painting, creative process, and professional development for artists. Her sessions, offered both in-person and online, are known for being warm, practical, and grounded in lived experience. As a neurodivergent practitioner, Gael brings clarity, depth, and a distinct perspective to both her teaching and her artwork.

Her latest exhibition, Fair Isle: Windswept Voices, will be showing at Inverness Creative Academy in Autumn 2025 and is based on residencies in Shetland over the Winter of 2024/5. She is currently writing a book on creativity, drawing on insights from her studio practice, philosophy, and her earlier career. Going forward, her focus is on expanding her exhibiting profile, strengthening relationships with collectors and galleries, and making meaningful contributions to the cultural landscape of the Highlands and beyond.