Doors Open Days 2022 film premiere

Doors Open, supporting Scotland's Year of Stories 2022. Image shows a painting of Jack Renton facing his own reflection.
Doors Open, supporting Scotland’s Year of Stories 2022.

Doors Open premiere

Saturday the 17th of September 2022 sees the release of a short animated film about art called Doors Open, by Orcadian artist Martin Laird. The film was created for Doors Open Days 2022, supporting Scotland’s Year of Stories. It will premiere at 12pm, on YouTube, with the artist on hand to chat online.

Doors Open – subscribe on YouTube and attend the premiere at 12pm on Saturday 17th September 2022.

Doors Open is a somewhat surreal tour through the digital realm, exploring the artist’s work, influences, and sources of inspiration. It references other artists, Orcadian history and culture, personal experience, and the phenomena of the ‘Caledonian antisyzygy‘, which is the supposed dual nature of the Scottish character (often exemplified by Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, but in this case by Jack Renton).

Doors Open still frame - Caledonian antisyzygy with the Sword of Scotland glowing white against the crescent of a solar eclipse, with the silhouettes of a unicorn and Scotland.
Doors Open – Caledonian antisyzygy with unicorn and solar eclipse. Photomontage, 2022.

The film is narrated by Graham McConnell, and features both animated and filmed sequences covering work past, present, and soon-to-be released. Much of the imagery was created specifically for the film.

Doors Open was created in the free and open-source 3d modelling and animation program Blender. Most of the artworks featured were hand-painted and photographed, although some drawn digitally. Among things to be seen in the virtual gallery and studio space are The Fairy Dance, an animated folk tale, the illustrated history book Rebel Orkney, and a sequence from the forthcoming Orcadian Stories films, which Martin is producing for The Orkney News in association with Museums Galleries Scotland.

Doors Open still frame showing Thalia the Comedy Muse on a torture rack in a virtual gallery space.
Doors Open – A scene showing the Comedy Muse.
Doors Open film sequence showing a painter in St Magnus Cathedral with flowers on a wildfires theme.
An artist in St. Magnus Cathedral, 2022. Still frame from Doors Open.