Artist Peter Doig

Peter Doig is a Scottish painter. I read of him recently in a Times magazine article by Bryan Appleyard. Oddly I had never heard of him, even while I often visit art galleries here and abroad. He was born in Edinburgh, the Tate lists him as English.

When others were turning to conceptual art in the 1990s Doig stuck to his painting.  

I went to check on his paintings and was impressed with his subtle use of colour and tones, thoughtful narratives and careful immersive reflections, Beautiful. 

Doig is one of the most renowned living figurative painters, he has settled in Trinidad since 2002. In 2007, his painting White Canoe sold at Sotheby's for $11.3 million, then an auction record for a living European artist. In February 2013, his painting, The Architect's Home in the Ravine, sold for $12 million at a London auction. 

His work is at the Palazzetto Tito, Venice from May 5, Venice biennial of art.   http://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/peter_doig.ht

National Art Galleries of Scotland

National Art Galleries of Scotland

At the Scottish National galleries in Edinburgh - I used to pass every day on my way to secondary school - there has not been a Scottish director for the past 60 years. The Scottish painters lie in its basement.  Most Scottish artists+ have had to move abroad to the likes of New York to gain recognition.  

In 2012 the galleries held an exhibition titled Van Gogh to Kandinsky | Symbolist Landscape in Europe 1880-1910 with not one Scottish painter in the display. 

The National Galleries of Scotland for the last 60 years have been run by directors from England. Does this matter?  Well yes if you value a country's expression. For those who wish to keep Scotland's historical and cultural identify suppressed it matters also.   

In most other major capital cities worldwide they house one half of the gallery for international art and the other sections for art of that country.  It would seem strange to visit the national art galleries of say Barcelona and for there not to be any Spanish art there? No idea what message this sends out to foreign visitors that in Scotland we rarely exhibit our own Scottish artists.

On my first visit to the refurbished Scottish portrait gallery a few years ago in 2011, I looked in vain for any respected Scottish photographers - when I know there are many! I hope this may be remedied now?  I just read that Scotland opened the first National Portrait gallery! The portrait gallery museum was (first established in 1882) and rehoused in its new purposed built building in 1889, the first in the world. Paid for by John Ritchie Findlay. 

Labour peer George Robertson, former Defence secretary and NATO chief, gave a speech at Dundee university where he claimed that places like Flanders and Catalonia have more history and culture than Scotland - when it fact Catalonia does not have anything like the long centuries of history Scotland has as a defined and separate country. In fact Scotland has a longer history than the UK has. 

He said regarding Scottish independence, " There is no linguistic differentiation, no great cultural discrimination that might ague for it, like in some other countries...."they have language and culture and all these sort of things. Scotland doesn't have any of that."    

I recommend reading the book 'Arts of Independence'  and 'Arts of the Resistance' on the suppression of Scottish arts, by Alexander Moffat and Alan Riach; the cultural argument and why it matters most. 

 http://www.luath.co.uk/arts-of-independence.html

Scottish summer festivals 2015

 - Party at the Palace, Linlithgow -  8th to 9th August. Headliners - Travis, Nile Rodgers, Julie Fowlis, Justin Currie, The Feeling, 

http://www.partyatthepalace.co.uk/ 

- The Stopover Festival, Rothiemurchus Cairngorms (NEW) - 31st July and 1st August.  Headlined by Mumford & Sons and their new album. Also with Primal Scream, The Maccabees, Ben Howard, Lianne La Havas and Honeyblood will also be performing at the 25,000-ticket event.  http://www.gentlemenoftheroad.com/stopovers/aviemore/

-  Boswell Book Festival -  the World's Only Festival of Biography and Memoir. May 10th at Dumfries house  Ayrshire. Jung Chang, author of international bestseller Wild Swans (yet to be published in China) will talk about her remarkable life, family and works. Plus many more authors.

'Moa ordered the flowers pulled up from the ground; Empress Cixi wore them in her hair.'

http://www.boswellbookfestival.co.uk/

- Mugstock Festival (new), at Mugdock country park north of Milngavie - 7th to 9th August.  Orkestra del Sol, Preston Reid, Siohban Wilson.   http://www.mugstock.org/

- Pittenweem Arts festival, 1st to 19th August.  http://www.pittenweemartsfestival.co.uk/

 

Other festivals include  -  Belladrum Tartan heart festival 6th - 8th August west of Inverness.  Kaiser Chiefs, Manic Street Preacher, Proclaimers.  http://www.tartanheartfestival.co.uk/

 Wickerman in Ayrshire with the Waterboys. Sadly no Rockness in 2015. 

T In The Park, the biggest weekend Scottish summer festival, has now moved to a new site at Strathallan Castle, while there are problems with ospreys nests.  http://www.tinthepark.com/

 

Poet Robert Fergusson

R

Robert Burns wrote of Robert Fergusson - 'My elder brother in misfortune, By far my elder brother in the muse.'

When Burns first arrived in Edinburgh in 1787, after two days pony ride, he went to find Fergusson's grave in the Canongate graveyard and he found there was no grave for his poetic mentor and so he paid what money he had to lay a commemorative stone of his own design on his grave.  When Burns first read Fergusson’s poems in the Scots dialect, he realised that he too might write in this way.

In a recent TV documentary author Andrew O'Hagan said that - ' without Burns we might never have known about Robert Fergusson and without Fergusson there might never have been our national bard Robert Burns.'

Unlike Burns, Fergusson was well connected and highly educated.  Fergusson was tutored at home and at fourteen he gained a bursary to a Dundee Grammar school. After which Fergusson attended St Andrews university to study Maths and Philosophy. Scotland believed in offering all a good education as a route out of poverty and so boys could read and interpret the Bible.

When he returned to Edinburgh, at the height of the Scottish Enlightenment, he worked as a legal copyist and he was part of the literary circle in Edinburgh called the Cape Club.  He began to write poems about the Edinburgh people and he wrote some poems in the Scottish dialect.  He had poems published in Walter Ruddiman's Weekly Review. His masterpiece is a poem entitled Auld Reekie.

He had his one poetry book published in 1773. Then his poems stopped and after he had a fall he was committed. Shortly after he died at the young age of 24.   

Fergusson is one of 16 poets depicted on the Scott Monument and he appears beside Robert Burns.  Several of Burn's work has traces of the impact of Fergusson's work - 'Leith Races' was a model for Burn's 'Holy Fair'; 'On Seeing a Butterfly' has similarities to 'To a Mouse'.