Gillette. The best a man can get?

VISIT www.ebbandflowart.com for a range of stunning Scottish landscape paintings by Euan Duguid

IN ASSOCIATION WITH

www.ebbandflowart.com and partners, namely Jamie S Duguid Esq, are delighted to sponsor top flight Scottish rugby this season.

Gillon Duguid, battle-hardened centre of Scottish Premier 3 outfit, the mighty Dalziel RFC, will charge into the bone crunching cut and thrust of competitive rugby with his heart on his sleeve - and the logo of www.ebbandflowart.com on his back.

Gillon, a physiotherapist, is reputed for his hard-hitting style of play and, resultantly, boasts more time in the treatment room than the NHS patients of his North Glasgow beat combined.

Torn ears, broken noses and swollen eyes. Okay, this sponsorship deal may not Beckham and Gillette.

It may also seem like an unlikely meeting of worlds.

But full contact sport and www.ebbandflowart.com  aren’t as incongruous as you may think.

It’s not that we’re into eye-gouging the staff of Millers art store or spear tackling our framing guy.

All the work you see on the website today has been inspired by one great adventure or another into the great outdoors of Scotland, either with the wife, weans, work mates or muckers.

Of course there’s been wilderness trecks with the Brothers Grimm too, like the time Fraser, Jamie, Gillon and Euan walked the West Highland Way in four days, the latter and oldest bro in an old pair of Timby boots.

It’s times like that we learned to rely on the magic of the landscape, as depicted in Euan's picture of Buachaille Etive Mor, (and the restorative power of whisky) to banish the blister demons.

There’s nothing like immersing yourself and your mates in the rugged, unforgiving yet beautiful landscape of Scotland to inspire and forge a formidable team.

It’s a bit like the game of rugby really. 

Spend 80 minutes throwing your body into tackles, rucks and mauls with 14 other guys and it elicits the same result; a band of brothers, albeit a bit more bloodied, will emerge.

We may not be Gillette, but for Gillon, we really are the best a man can get.

Good luck to Gillon and the rest of the players of Dalziel RFC for season 2011/12. Follow the team’s progress here www.dalzielrugby.com

VISIT www.ebbandflowart.com for a range of stunning Scottish landscape paintings by Euan Duguid

Isle be damned

VISIT www.ebbandflowart.com today for a range of inspired Scottish landscape paintings - like the one of Harris above.

Scotland; Dreich, drab and parochial.

You couldn't be further from the truth.

In the last few days it's been revealed that around 66% of people in a British survey wrongly identified Luskentyre beach on the Isle of Harris as somewhere in Thailand.

http://thesun.mobi/thescottishsun/news/3736589/Isle-be-darned-thats-Harris.html?mob=1

Having had the privilege of visiting the tropical paradise (of Harris) on two occasions, I can personally testify that this magical outpost truly is a world beater.

Towering, rocky mountain ranges, somewhere between a lunar landscape and Tolkien’s Middle Earth, sweep dramatically down to meet brilliant white beaches that look like they’ve been airdropped in from Bermuda. Or Thailand.

But it’s not just the landscape that’s vibrant.

In my day job, as an intrepid journalist, I’ve visited communities battling for their very existence as terminal population decline, lack of jobs and the outside pull of globalisation threatens to wipe  them off the map. (See attached article from my trip there in 2009)

But their fight for survival is one characterised by ingenuity, focus and tenacity; squaring up to adversity and seizing their destiny before it’s all too late.

The titanic effort to keep the lifeblood of these fragile, isolated communities flowing is as humbling as it is inspiring.

But if you lived in this stunning Hebridean utopia, would you let it go?

Neither would I.

Bermuda, Bahamas . . .
Thailand. Eat your heart out.



VISIT www.ebbandflowart.com today for a range of inspired Scottish landscape paintings.