From the mid 1970s Andrews and his wife, June, and daughter Melanie, spent their Augusts in Scotland at Glenartney in the Perthshire hills and this was an area that he knew intimately. But, in contrast to the subjective dimension of Bomberg's expressive response to landscapes, which are commonly shown as unpeopled and in which it is the present that is heightened, in Andrews's works what interested the artist was both the stamp of history on a place and the imprint of lives: 'What I'm painting is historical landscape, that's to say landscapes relating to the chain of events. It's time and landscape that interests me. The way it's been affected by the people living in it.'1

Two of Andrews's principal periods of painting the Scottish landscape were in 1980-81 and then again in 1990-91, that is immediately before and after his paintings of Ayers Rock in Australia.

In relating drawing to painting Andrews observed that 'as often as not it is the circumstantial marks on the drawing which actually have the structural significance on the painting. It's not the ones that you think should be important that turn out to be: it's really the little odd things which point your attention to the important things.'2

1. Michael Andrews, quoted by William Feaver, in 'An Actual Present Atmosphere' in Michael Andrews, Tate, 2001
2. as above