Richard Welsby worked as an artist from 1972–2022, using, and extending the medium of film and photography. From the use of time-lapse, mirrors and pendulums to alter the camera’s view, to the application of a light-sensitive emulsion (liquid light) to watercolour paper which he then exposed to photographic images of plants and other subjects that reflected his interest in nature and perception.

He also used more conventional photographic techniques which were presented in less conventional ways – playing with positive and negative, in series, at very large or very small scales, placed on the floor or ceiling or with related objects. In his exhibition Marionette at the Pier Arts Centre alongside Lawrence Weiner, a New York artist, in 1986, Richard used shadows cast by the leaves of a strategically placed plant as an adjunct to his work. This harked back to an early work Projected light 1977.

In 1980, the recently opened Pier Arts Centre and instigation of the St. Magnus Festival, as well as the beauty and history of the islands, were instrumental in deciding to move to live and work in Orkney. Richard actively supported both, being part of the Pier Arts Centre Management Committee for a period, contributing to the St Magnus Festival on many occasions, and having a role in the Orkney Arts Society.

Richard met Angus Reid of Speakeasy Pictures in 1991 when he was organising the Margins artists residencies, in Skerray, Sutherland and Papa Westray, Orkney. Richard participated alongside Angus, Miles Richmond, Angus Farquhar, Lindsay John and others.

In 1997, Richard collaborated with Angus once more when he was invited to document and contribute to his documentary feature film The Ring. It was partly shot in post-war Bosnia, and accompanied Envera Crnolic in the search for her husband Rufad, who had disappeared at the start of the war.

This trip made a deep impression on Richard, and he made some hauntingly emotive photographic images from this experience. His images from the camp Kamenica form a central part of the Bosnian episode of the film. Other episodes were filmed in Scotland, The Azores and Burkina Faso, West Africa. Rufad’s body was discovered 10 years later in a mass grave in Bosnia.

The interrelationship between the visual arts, music and science was central to Richard’s approach and led him to involvement in both the Orkney and Slovenian Science Festivals.

Richard played the acoustic guitar, his own compositions. He built and taught himself to play a Clavichord, to play, re-string and tune a piano. He composed and created music as sound for his films, developed mechanisms to create sound that related the image formation, or composed pieces for the piano. Richard researched the foundations of music, writing, and developing musical ideas that informed his films and artworks such as The Music of the Spheres, Organised Music, and Temperament.

After a severe stroke in 2008, Richard was given a small digital camera that he could use with just his left hand. Richard was righthanded. From then on, Richard took daily photographs documenting, as he described it, the – flotsam and jetsam of life – in which he included himself in his altered state. Richard looked out for the small things, a shadow, cast of light, pattern, or shape on the ground, plants, reflections, and incidental details – that were – lost and found. A process of looking that focussed on things most of us wouldn’t notice but that when he captured them as he wanted were nevertheless poignant as individual images, or as a series.

Some recalled earlier work which he had titled Strange but True, originating from accidental photographs that the camera seemed to take itself; some, echoed his interest in reflections, light and shadow, and plants. He continued to take photographs until a week before this death in March 2022.

Richard requested that Strange but True should be his epitaph – an Orkney flagstone bearing these words remains in Orkney, to be found unexpectedly.

Clare Froy (Welsby), 23rd February 2024