A lovely review of RSA 200 in The Scotsman

Very pleased to read Susan Mansfield’s generous four-star review of RSA 200 at Glasgow Print Studio in The Scotsman.

Susan considers the work of all four exhibitors — Rachel Maclean, Barry McGlashan, Caroline Walker and myself — and the ways in which our rather different approaches to painting and narrative come together in the exhibition.

It’s always encouraging when a critic takes the time to look carefully at the work and consider the relationships between artists, particularly in a group exhibition where the connections are not necessarily obvious at first glance.

Many thanks to Susan for the thoughtful review, and congratulations again to my fellow exhibitors and everyone at Glasgow Print Studio.

Read Susan Mansfield’s review in The Scotsman.

A Nod to the Academy — Tatha Gallery

A very convivial private view at Tatha Gallery in Newport-on-Tay for A Nod to the Academy, another exhibition celebrating 200 years of the Royal Scottish Academy.

The exhibition brings together work by nine Academicians, including James Castle, Doug Cocker, Francis Convery, Ronnie Forbes, Derrick Guild, Henry Kondracki, Marian Leven, Will Maclean and myself.

It was particularly enjoyable to catch up with colleagues and friends, and to see such a varied collection of work in this lovely gallery overlooking the Tay.

I was also fortunate to be the guest of my good friend and mentor Joyce Cairns, with the evening rounded off by fish and chips and a glass of rosé back at her home in Broughty Ferry. A rather splendid way to finish a private view.

Many thanks to the Tatha team for including me and for such a warm welcome.

Explore A Nod to the Academy at Tatha Gallery.

Apparatus — Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2026

A wonderful evening at the private view of the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2026 in London. It was a real pleasure to see my drawing Apparatus hanging among such an extraordinary and wide-ranging celebration of contemporary drawing.

Apparatus is part of a developing series of drawings inspired by memories of my schooldays at Robert Gordon’s College in Aberdeen during the 1970s and early 1980s. Made with scratch dip pen and diluted gouache, it draws on recollections of physical education, school discipline, institutional architecture and the peculiar rituals of school life. As with much of my work, memory provides the starting point, but imagination soon takes over.

The Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize is particularly interesting because of its wonderfully broad interpretation of what drawing can be. From the most delicate and intimate observations to ambitious, experimental and unconventional approaches, the exhibition is a reminder of just how inventive and vital drawing continues to be.

It was also lovely to catch up with fellow artists Annie Cattrell, Heather McAteer and Susan Absolon. One of the pleasures of these occasions is the opportunity to reconnect with friends and colleagues, often after far too long, and to discover what everyone has been working on.

Many thanks to prize founder and director Anita Taylor, along with everyone at Trinity Buoy Wharf and Drawing Projects UK, for bringing together such a fascinating exhibition. The selection and installation must have been quite an undertaking, and it was a privilege to have my drawing included.

The exhibition was open at Trinity Buoy Wharf, London, from 17 September until 4 October 2026.

Further links

Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize

Annie Cattrell on Instagram

For someone who spends most of his time inventing elaborate buildings, imaginary cities and slightly dysfunctional institutions in the relative comfort of a studio, painting directly from the landscape is something of a departure.

A rush of blood to the head, combined with an unexpected phone call from the producers of Sky Arts Landscape Artist of the Year asking whether I might consider applying, led me to enter the competition. Quite what possessed me, I’m still not entirely sure.

I wasn’t selected. Or at least, not initially.

Then, at the last minute, I received another call asking whether I would be willing to act as a reserve contestant for the London heats. This meant being ready to step in should one of the selected artists fall ill, fail to turn up or otherwise become unavailable. Naturally, I said yes.

There were two heats in London, one in St James’s Park near Buckingham Palace and the other aboard HMS Wellington, moored on the Embankment. Both required me to turn up at the crack of dawn, fully equipped with easels, palettes, paints and all the other paraphernalia that oil painters seem incapable of travelling without.

The first involved lugging everything across London on the Tube to St James’s Park, waiting around hopefully, and eventually being told that everyone had turned up and I wouldn’t be needed. So it was back on the Tube with the entire travelling circus.

Two days later, I repeated the exercise, this time heading for HMS Wellington. Things initially looked rather more promising, but once again all the selected contestants arrived, apparently in excellent health. My brief career as a potential television painting contestant was over before it had begun.

However, I was offered a place among the wildcard painters on the lower deck, which turned out to be rather good fun. On what felt like the hottest day of the year, I spent a very enjoyable few hours getting to know my fellow wildcard artists, including the lovely Olivia and her daughter, while attempting to paint a view towards the Southbank Centre.

Unfortunately, the painting was something of a disaster. I managed to get oil paint everywhere, struggled with the heat and made a complete hash of the view. Not exactly the triumphant television debut I had imagined.

The irony was that I’d spent weeks back in Edinburgh practising plein air painting, trying to improve my speed, observation and ability to make decisions under pressure. All that preparation, only to spend most of my time on the London Underground or waiting to see whether somebody else might fail to appear.

Still, I had a wonderful time, met some lovely people and came away with a renewed appreciation of just how difficult painting directly from the landscape can be. It also encouraged me to continue making occasional excursions outdoors with my paints, even if I’m not quite ready to abandon my imaginary architecture for the real thing.

And at least I can say I nearly appeared on Landscape Artist of the Year. Twice.

See some of my plein air paintings from 2025–26

It was a real pleasure to convene RSA New Contemporaries 2025 at the Royal Scottish Academy, bringing together work by 63 recent graduates from Scotland’s art and architecture schools.

The process began the previous summer with visits to degree shows across Scotland, always one of the most enjoyable, inspiring and occasionally exhausting parts of the job. I was fortunate to have a terrific team of fellow Academicians working alongside me: Joyce Cairns at Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen, Mary Bourne at Moray College, Mhairi Killin at Glasgow School of Art, Lorna McIntosh at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design in Dundee, and Ilana Halperin at Edinburgh College of Art.

Each accompanied me on the degree-show visits, bringing their own experience, curiosity and enthusiasm to what can be a demanding selection process. There is always so much interesting work to see, and never quite enough time to see it all. The discussions were lively, thoughtful and occasionally challenging, which is exactly what you want when trying to identify some of the most exciting emerging artists and architects in Scotland.

Joyce, Mary, Mhairi and Lorna then joined me again at the RSA to help curate and install the exhibition. This is where another set of challenges begins: bringing together an extraordinary variety of paintings, sculptures, installations, films, photographs, architectural projects and other work, and finding a way for everything to coexist in the galleries.

They were a fantastic team to work with — thoughtful, generous, practical and good-humoured throughout. Hanging an exhibition of this scale involves countless decisions, occasional compromises, a fair amount of head-scratching and the occasional moment when you wonder whether everything will actually fit! Their judgement, patience and willingness to get stuck in made the whole experience not only manageable but thoroughly enjoyable. I couldn’t have wished for a better group of colleagues.

One of the great pleasures of New Contemporaries is encountering artists and architects at the beginning of their careers, often making work with a confidence, ambition and willingness to experiment that puts some of us older hands to shame. It is a wonderful reminder of the extraordinary breadth of creative talent emerging from Scotland’s art and architecture schools.

It was enormously satisfying to see the exhibition finally installed and particularly enjoyable to meet many of the exhibitors once the show opened. I also had the pleasure of leading a gallery tour with several of the artists, hearing them talk about their work, their experiences at art school and their hopes for the future.

My thanks to Joyce, Mary, Mhairi, Lorna and Ilana for their tremendous contribution to the selection process, and particularly to Joyce, Mary, Mhairi and Lorna for their additional work on the curation and installation. Thanks also to the RSA staff, whose hard work behind the scenes made the exhibition possible.

And, of course, congratulations to all 63 exhibiting artists and architects. It was a privilege to help bring their work to a wider audience, and I look forward to seeing where their practices take them next.

Explore RSA New Contemporaries 2025

Artist-led gallery tour at the RSA

Eight months to paint — the Houston Blackadder sabbatical

One of the greatest pleasures of 2024 has been the opportunity to spend an extended period concentrating almost entirely on painting, thanks to the RSA Houston Blackadder Mid-Career Painting Prize, which I was fortunate enough to receive in 2023.

The £20,000 award enabled me to take an eight-month sabbatical from my teaching commitments at the University of Edinburgh. After more than three decades of squeezing studio time around the academic calendar, this was something of a revelation.

I was able to work on several ambitious canvases, develop ideas without the usual interruptions and pursue my increasingly elaborate visions of Edinburgh, its architecture, infrastructure and imagined futures.

Of course, having more time doesn’t necessarily make painting any easier. It simply provides more opportunities to change your mind, paint things out and start again.

Nevertheless, it has been a wonderful opportunity, and one that has made me think rather seriously about how I might organise the next chapter of my working life.

Read about the award and the work it supported.

Frontiers: Painting in Scotland Now — Royal Scottish Academy

Exhibitors: Philip Braham RSA | John Brown | Robbie Bushe RSA | Michael Clarence | Francis Convery RSA | Andrew Cranston RSA (Elect) | Catharine Davison | Laura Drever | Jack Dunnett | Joe Fan RSA | Moyna Flannigan | Helen Flockhart RSA | Audrey Grant | Derrick Guild RSA | Kevin Harman | Joanna Holisz | Olivia Irvine | Paul Keir | Lizzie Lilley | Lynsey MacKenzie | Lily Macrae | Barry McGlashan | Sin Park | Toby Paterson RSA (Elect) | Rowan Paton | Sharon Quigley | Finn Robinson | Catherine Ross | Elaine Speirs | Alasdair Wallace | Kirsty Whiten

3 August – 8 September 2024

After many months of planning, selecting artists, studio visits and discussions, Frontiers: Painting in Scotland Nowfinally opened in the Lower Galleries of the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh. I was delighted to co-curate the exhibition with Flora La Thangue, bringing together work by 31 artists at different stages of their careers, from emerging painters to established practitioners and Royal Scottish Academicians.

The exhibition grew out of a question that has interested me for much of my career as both a painter and an art educator. In a world where artists can work in almost any medium, and where digital imagery is everywhere, why does painting continue to attract so many artists, particularly younger ones?

In my introduction to the exhibition catalogue, I reflected on the changing fortunes of painting in Scottish art education. For much of the twentieth century, the four historic Scottish art schools maintained strong and distinctive painting departments. By the 1990s and 2000s, however, traditional disciplinary boundaries were being dismantled, and students were encouraged to explore emerging technologies and new ways of making art. Quite rightly, too.

Yet painting never really went away. Indeed, I suggested that it had almost become a subversive activity, pursued by students and recent graduates with a renewed sense of freedom and rebellion, often unencumbered by the weight of its own traditions. The generations that followed have continued to reinvent what painting might be.

We deliberately avoided organising Frontiers around a particular theme, movement or style. Nor did we pretend to offer a definitive survey of Scottish painting. Instead, we wanted to bring together artists whose work might challenge, contradict and occasionally surprise one another, and hopefully provoke some lively conversations about the state of painting in Scotland.

It was a considerable undertaking, but enormously rewarding to see the exhibition come together, and particularly enjoyable to work with so many artists whose paintings I admire. I was also pleased to contribute two of my own large paintings, The Launch and The Mound.

The exhibition was accompanied by a substantial illustrated catalogue, with a foreword by Flora and my introduction, alongside images and contributions from the exhibiting artists responding to the question: In a time when an artist can work in any media, why choose painting?

The exhibition attracted over 68,000 visitors during its five-week run, which was enormously encouraging. I also chaired Other Worlds: A Conversation about Contemporary Painting in Scotland, a symposium bringing together four of the exhibiting artists to discuss their practices and the continuing possibilities of painting. It was a fitting way to extend some of the conversations that had prompted the exhibition in the first place.

Many thanks to everyone at the RSA, my fellow curator Flora, and all the participating artists for helping make it happen.

Links

Explore the exhibition and artists’ work at the RSA

Frontiers exhibition catalogue — Royal Scottish Academy

My 2024 Frontiers and Houston Blackadder project page

Delighted to have returned to the Open Eye Gallery in Edinburgh with Ghosts in the Garden, a collection of paintings that grew out of a rather modest drawing project begun during lockdown.

Back in 2021, I spent 100 days making observational drawings in our garden in south Edinburgh. What began as a way of looking more carefully at familiar plants, pots, fences and garden furniture gradually developed into something considerably stranger.

The garden became a stage for invented characters, memories, bureaucratic interventions and the occasional unexpected visitor. I seem incapable of leaving even the most peaceful domestic setting alone without introducing some sort of crisis.

It has been particularly enjoyable to see these paintings hanging together after several years of working on them. Many thanks to everyone at the Open Eye Gallery for their support.

Explore the Ghosts in the Garden project and visit the Open Eye Gallery.