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Saturday morning at the Artist’s House. We step out of our front door, wander past the pony, donkey and a 12-metre high orchid projecting into the distinctly untropical skies over West Lothian and start running. Two children, two adults and one dog straining on the end of her lead, all headed for … a sculpture.
Charles Jencks’s Cells of Life, to be precise. A collection of eight swirling green mounds connected by a causeway and hemmed by lakes in which land and sky are mirrored, upside down, in endless formal conversation. It took eight years to create. It’s a monumental statement on the cellular process of mitosis by one of the world’s great landscape architects. It’s also the most beautiful playground imaginable. And we have it all to ourselves.
Staying at the Artist’s House in Jupiter Artland is the fantasy of being locked in a museum overnight come to life. Except the museum is a 120-acre world-class sculpture park. And for two nights we have the keys to a completely one-off house packed to the rafters with original art. (Hence, note, the slightly alarming alarm system.)
Holiday cottages don’t come more magical than this. In the mornings we wake up to a textile on the wall opposite our bed by Grayson Perry called Gay Black Cats. In the evenings we peer through French double doors to the panorama stretching from the terrace like a blanket stitched out of a thousand winking lights. An outstanding view of the Firth, with the trio of Forth Bridges throwing angular shapes on the horizon. An outlook that, in such heightened surrounds, starts to look like an artwork in itself — which, of course, it is.
The Artist’s House is packed to the rafters with original art
If it wasn’t raining we’d be out in our garden, with its young orchard and old pines, cooking over coals on our Big Green Egg barbecue. Or lying back in the Swedish wood-fired hot tub, watching steam circle skywards. No such luck. But it’s a mark of how special the Artist’s House is that we don’t even take the Scottish weather personally. We just get cosy. We watch the trees swaying through the big square window in our open-plan sitting room, which is all reclaimed wood-clad walls, dark glossy floors, squidgy sofas and outré fringed lamps. Or run a bath in the freestanding roll-top tub in our bedroom. Or flick through the collection of art and design books. Or wander the rooms, looking at the art — by Phyllida Barlow, Peter Liversidge, Nathan Coley and more — as if the cottage were a gallery. That, again, it is.
You’ll find interesting and eclectic artwork in the Artist’s House
Jupiter Artland, just five miles west of Edinburgh, is an award-winning sculpture park that in 2016 was shortlisted for the Art Fund’s Museum of the Year award. It is now an important player in the art world. The owners, Nicky and Robert Wilson, who live in the Jacobean manor at the park’s centre, bought the estate in 1999 and since 2009 have opened the grounds to the public every summer. Dotted about are site-specific works by artists including Tracey Emin, Anish Kapoor, Jim Lambie, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Antony Gormley and more, inserted into the landscape like boulders balanced between the branches of coppiced trees. (One of my favourite works here, by Andy Goldsworthy.)
But you experience all of it in a completely different way when you’re staying on site. With familiarity, the work and the ancient arable land in which it is situated, becomes at once less and more strange. It is a total immersion. Guests at the Artist’s House can even request a bathing slot in Joana Vasconcelos’s Gateway — a heated swimming pool. Even out of season, though, you get the whole place to yourselves. A magical experience like no other.
Cafe Party, the bistro at Jupiter Artland
In the morning I walk the dog round the surreal exterior of Cafe Party, Jupiter Artland’s bistro. The resident chef is David Millar, who recently represented Scotland on BBC’s Great British Menu. Its mirrored walls raise the dog’s hackles and she starts barking at her reflection. I start laughing to no one but myself. In the afternoon we wander through the forest, peeling off this way and that. My daughter assumes the positions of Laura Ford’s eerie Weeping Girls, leaning against a tree and letting her hair fall in a curtain around her face. My son peers through the hole cut into the stone top of Hamilton Finlay’s Temple of Apollo. On the way back to the Artist’s House we catch a glimpse of Nathan Coley’s vast illuminated text standing alone in a field: “You Imagine What You Desire”. That’s it. If I had to imagine what I desired into existence, it would be this enchanting house, in this enchanted place.
Chitra Ramaswamy was a guest of Canopy & Stars (canopyandstars.co.uk/theartistshouse). Two nights’ self-catering for six people from £1,100
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