Glacial Times - Iona (RESERVED)

Original acrylic on canvas by David Page. 

This painting is one of David's new 2026 collection, Grit and Grace: Iona. 

Each painting in The Last Munro exhibition is accompanied by a limited edition, large-format book, featuring the full collection and David's insightful personal notes.

ARTISTS DESCRIPTION:

Embedded in the sands of the northern beaches of the island are pink-shaded rocks amidst the darker outcrops. Argyll Vol. 4 – Iona by the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland provides an explanation:

“In glacial times ice moved north-westward across Iona, bringing numerous erratic blocks from the Ross of Mull and from further east”.

It is amusing to think that, like us, the pink stones of the Ross of Mull are visitors to the island, and indeed contributed to the construction of the island’s ecclesiastical and domestic infrastructure, as the text elaborates:

“These surface erratics, and the numerous rounded granite boulders in the glacial sands and gravels, formed an important source of building material in the medieval and modern periods”.

This painting seeks to capture how geology and human history have come full circle in this North beach landscape where the rocks are laid out in serried ranks like the monumental commemorative slabs in the Abbey precincts.

Want to learn more about the collection? Read David's full artist statement here.