Michael J Dixon
Oil paintings of Diabaig and loch Torridon
Welcome to my website. Diabaig is a tiny village on the west coast of Scotland. When it isn't raining I can look out to the Isle of Skye and beyond to the Hebrides. When it's inclement (which is quite often), I sit in the porch and paint, watching the northern shore of Loch Torridon, the magnificent mountains and the ever changing sea.
I paint in oils and sell prints and originals. My prints range from £25-£125, depending on size, and my oil paintings, unframed with a Certificate of Authenticity, from £250-£600. Please click here for my current stock of paintings and prints. If you're actually in Diabaig, you can buy prints from the restaurant there, Gille Brighde.
I've been spending time here for the last fifty years, on holiday, with my parents and, most recently renovating their croft house. It was built around 1910, with walls a couple of feet thick, made from big rocks and a bit of lime mortar. This makes modernisation a challenge!
Whenever I paint a picture here, it sparks memories and I've pulled them all together here, along with a gallery of my paintings. I paint in oils, outside when I can, dodging the rain and the midges, or from photographs, some of them from way back. Even if I'm outside, I usually take photographs as the weather, and the light, can change so quickly. You can buy prints, framed or unframed, at the most excellent Gille Brighde restaurant on the seafront at Diabaig or, if you'd like to buy an original, please contact me using the form.
Long before my time, the restaurant building was the schoolhouse, when Diabaig was a thriving herring community and there were lots of children. In the 1990s it was used by the local fishfarm and now, as a place to meet and eat, its got a fabulous atmosphere. You have to book very early to get a table in the summer.
Most of my paintings are brushed but sometimes I use a method called Impasto, meaning "thick layers of paint, with visible brush or knife strokes". It's basically undiluted paint, straight from the tube and applied with a palette knife. With this method, you really have to get it right first time, as it all goes muddy if you push the paint around. Sometimes I'll pick up several colours with the edge of the palette knife, and then wiggle it down the board to represent wet sand on a beach or maybe a stormy sky.
If it all goes wrong you can scrape it off, dry the canvas and try again, but I try not to. I just paint them quickly, in one sitting, and have fun!
