Tag Archives: Art

Eardley painting of Glasgow children to be sold at auction

SHUGGIE AND JAMESIE TWO OF JOAN EARDLEY’S FAMOUS GLASGOW CHILDREN AT BONHAMS WINTER ART SALE IN EDINBURGH

A charming painting of two Glasgow street children by Joan Eardley is to be offered at Bonhams Scottish Art sale in Edinburgh next week on 4 December 2014. It is estimated at £25,000-35,000.

Shuggie and Jamesie, which has been in the same private hands since 1964, is one of the celebrated series of images of children that Eardley produced in her studio on St James’s Road Townhead in Glasgow during the 1950s. It is on these distinctive works and the later sea and landscapes of the area round Catterline in Aberdeenshire that her reputation as one of Scotland’s finest 20th century artists largely rest.

Joan Eardley was well known in Townhead and children would flock to her studio door looking for sweets in exchange for a few minutes modelling. She worked mostly in pastel, an ideal medium for capturing the image quickly before the children grew bored and started to fidget and run off. Shuggie and Jamesie appears pinned to the top of the easel in Audrey Walter’s photograph of Eardley working in her Townhead studio.

The Townhead of Eardley and her street children is long since gone. The tenement buildings that characterised so much of the area were demolished in the 1960s, the families either re-housed in new tower blocks or moved to estates like Easterhouse on the outskirts of Glasgow.

Bonhams Head of Scottish Art, Chris Brickley, said, “Joan Eardley’s street children became a kind of trademark during the early part of her career. Not only are they highly evocative and accomplished works in their own right they also bear poignant witness to a vanished age.”

Getting out of Glasgow – The Edinburgh School exhibition in Crinan

'Overlooking Plockton' by Adam Bruce Thomson OBE, RSA

If you are lucky enough to be travelling on Scotland’s west coast during October then point your car, carriage or sailing boat in the direction of the Crinan Hotel. At the end of Crinan’s famous canal you will find an inspired collection of drawings and paintings by a group of 20th century Scottish artists collectively known as The Edinburgh School.

As friends and colleagues they all studied at Edinburgh College of Art in the years before and just after the second world war. They went on to become some of Scotland’s most acclaimed artists. Amongst them were Sir William MacTaggart, John Maxwell, Sir William Gillies, Denis Peploe, Anne Redpath, John Houston and Adam Bruce Thomson. The Edinburgh School is known for its virtuoso displays in the use of paint using vivid and often non-naturalistic colours. Their subjects range across still-life, seascape and landscape

A collection of around thirty paintings and drawing by these artists is on display during October at the Crinan Hotel. While many of the artists found inspiration from their travels in France and Italy, a number also found their subject matter nearer home. Houston’s dramatic East Lothian sunsets contrast vividly with Redpath’s townscape of Menton in France. Add watercolours by Blackadder and McTaggart and you have every reason to make your way to Crinan’s Gallery with Rooms. A very decent seafood bar and good autumnal rates for accommodation also make the journey well worthwhile.

The ‘Edinburgh School’ Exhibition runs until to 24th October 2011

The Crinan Hotel, Crinan by Lochgilphead, Argyll PA31 8SR, Tel: 01546 830 261

By All Means Necessary – Glasgow School of Art

An innovative student exhibition sparks the interest of ‘arty types.’

Friday 22 April saw Glasgow’s art lovers flock to the top floor studio at uber-cool hangout, The Art School, to witness a special exhibition of recent work by artists Jackson Marlette and Robin Leishman.

The two students in their final year at Glasgow School of Art put together the unique event, calling it By All Means Necessary, in a matter of weeks, and greeted the many guests with a cold beer and a polite eagerness to discuss the concept for the exhibition:-

“The idea was to show that massively differing personal inspirations can sit side by side in a harmonious habitat through linking imagery,” said Robin.

“We wanted to show that art doesn’t need to be consciously curated together to work collaboratively in this sort of space. There just needs to be an overlap in passion to allow the work to make sense together, and in our case what links our work is the psychology, imagery and military motifs.”

Indeed, walking into the exhibition space, sparse but for the adorned walls, visitors were confronted with two very different fine art styles.

Jackson Marlette’s work used primarily paint and spray paint on canvas (materials that are sometimes considered ‘primitive’ in a contemporary sense), and focused on memory and paranoia.

The most striking aspect of his work was the imagery of guerrilla militia and live arms, set against a background of vivid primary colours and erratic brush strokes to create a contrast between the unsettling and the childish. Needless to say, the result was disturbing, yet captivating.

Like Jackson, Robin’s work also focused on childhood and memory, however the materials used in his case included photography, and pine and steel etchings.

A favourite among visitors was a mural of photographs showing toy soldiers carrying a wounded comrade away on a stretcher. The photos had been stitched together with thread to create one large, touching scene.

Robin said: “I wanted to explore the relationship that we all form with inanimate objects in order to stimulate an organic memory of the past.”

“It’s privately a shrine to the memory of my father. By using the military toys that he once played with as a child, I was hoping to create a bridge to a man that I never knew by developing a relationship with his possessions, and using their motifs to engage in a visual dialogue.”

If the effect of By All Means Necessary was to show that different styles of art can exist in the same space harmoniously, linked only by one single inspiration, then the brief was undoubtedly met.

Guests at the exhibition marvelled at the unique notion of a joint showcase, and Leishman and Garrett have certainly caught the attention of Glasgow’s art luvvies, which will surely stand both artists in great stead for the future.

You can next see Robin Leishman and Jackson Marlette’s work displayed at the Glasgow School of Art’s Fine Art degree show from June 11- 18.