2024 Frontiers/ Blackadder Houston
2024 was an unusually productive and rewarding year, largely thanks to the RSA Houston Blackadder Mid-Career Painting Prize, which I had been awarded in 2023. The £20,000 award enabled me to take an eight-month sabbatical from my teaching commitments at the University of Edinburgh and, for the first time in many years, concentrate almost entirely on my own painting practice. Having spent much of my career fitting studio time around teaching, this was a wonderful opportunity to work without the usual interruptions, develop ideas more fully and tackle some rather ambitious large-scale paintings.
Much of this time was spent exploring the constructed environments, architectural spaces and social narratives that have increasingly occupied my work. The paintings became more elaborate, often bringing together imagined buildings, interiors and fragments of everyday life to explore questions of governance, social organisation, isolation and the sometimes absurd ways in which we choose to live. Having the freedom to work across several paintings simultaneously, and to allow ideas to develop over weeks and months rather than snatched afternoons, was particularly valuable.
Another major undertaking was Frontiers: Painting in Scotland Now, a substantial exhibition at the Royal Scottish Academy which I co-curated in the summer of 2024. Bringing together a wide range of contemporary painting practices from across Scotland, the exhibition was both a celebration of the vitality of painting and an opportunity to consider its continuing relevance and possibilities. It was a considerable undertaking, but an enormously rewarding one, particularly the opportunity to work alongside so many artists whose work I admire.
Looking back, the year proved something of a turning point. The sabbatical demonstrated just how much could be achieved with sustained time in the studio, and reinforced my growing ambition to concentrate more fully on painting. It also made returning to the usual balance of teaching and studio practice rather more difficult! In many ways, the experiences of 2024 laid the groundwork for my decision to take voluntary severance from the University of Edinburgh the following year and embark on a new chapter as a full-time artist.
Paintings
Works on Paper
