Passions: The beachcombing art of Mull's Helen Mortley

The longer you look at Helen Mortley’s works of art, the more you see, writes Roger Cox

Iona Marble, Turquoise Bracelet and Urchin by Helen Mortley. Picture: Roger Cox

There can be few better places to spend October week than the Isle of Mull. At this time of year the trees are in their full autumn glory, the bracken is shading to golden-brown, the weather is usually a dramatic mixture of sunshine and blustery showers and the temperature’s just getting low enough to justify lighting a fire in the evenings. An autumn visit almost feels like training for winter: spend a day being blown around on one of the island’s many beaches, or slogging up and down Ben More, and you’re reminded, after a warm, lazy summer, of what it feels like to be properly exposed to the elements again, as the year begins to turn.

A highlight of any Mull trip is a visit to Calgary Bay – a strip of blindingly white sand on the island's north coast, backed by old-growth woodland, and, while there, a wander around Calgary: Art in Nature. Established in 1999, this outdoor art walk occupies a steep-sided site beside the beach, and is home to an ever-expanding collection of work. A well-marked trail takes you over an old millpond, then up a steep, forested hillside until you reach the wide, tussocky sweep of Orchid Meadow, with dramatic views out over the bay.

Back at the car park, there's also a gallery showing work by a range of local artists, but the one I always look for first is Helen Mortley. Her signature pieces are shadow boxes containing items gleaned from beachcombing expeditions, which she then organises into simple geometric shapes – usually circles or squares. That process might sound simple, but look closely and you realise that the organised chaos of these pieces is very carefully organised indeed.

One of my most treasured possessions is a Helen Mortley assemblage from 2015, titled Iona Marble, Turquoise Bracelet and Urchin, and the longer you look at it, the more you see. The titular piece of Iona marble near the centre is framed by a fragile-looking piece of driftwood that looks for all the world like a skeletal finger and thumb. Elsewhere, bits of sea-worn pottery, crab claws, pieces of sea glass and fragments of tin cans link together to form sinuous lines around larger pieces of driftwood. Helen and her husband Andy have recently opened a new gallery in Dervaig – definitely worth a visit on your way to somewhere blustery.

Roger Cox is Arts & Books Editor at The Scotsman