Simply Painting by Inverness Museum & Art Gallery

Simply Painting Curated

by Jim Mooney

Kenneth Dingwall John Golding Andrew Graves Jane Harris Yvonne Hindle Vanessa Jackson Rosa Lee Jon Thompson

Dedicated to John Dougill 1934 - 2015 Painter and Teacher

Simply Painting Curated

by Jim Mooney

Kenneth Dingwall John Golding Andrew Graves Jane Harris Yvonne Hindle Vanessa Jackson Rosa Lee Jon Thompson

Simply Painting: Envisioning Being and Constructing Immanence The artists selected for this exhibition have demonstrated, through distinguished national and international careers, an unflinching belief in the practice of Painting as Painting. Their work does not rely on modes of expression perhaps more suited to other disciplines such as narration or the imagistic/linguistic practices of identification, nomination and depiction. Rather, the works are notable for their intelligent and dedicated exploration of the formal and expressive concerns that properly belong to, and are particular to, the visuality of an abstract painting entirely devoid of any mimetic tendency. Accordingly, their work is testimony to paintingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s capacity to be both a vehicle and repository of being and experience and the experience of being. They subtly and passionately reveal to us the precarious and provisional nature of what it is to be human through the pursuit of a seemingly non-utilitarian practice: a useless endeavour.

allows these works to enter into critical, yet necessarily oblique, dialogue with other practices such as philosophy, music, geometry and the history of painting itself. Consequently, painting practices that perhaps initially appear to have a narrow focus, when scrutinized and meditated upon, open a dilating aperture onto other worlds, expanding both these worlds and painting itself in the process. The artists in this exhibition: Kenneth Dingwall; John Golding; Andrew Graves; Jane Harris; Yvonne Hindle; Vanessa Jackson; Rosa Lee and Jon Thompson were selected first and foremost on the strength of their work and the way in which it supports, indeed demonstrates, the notion of representing being and experience and the experience of being briefly outlined above. Nevertheless, they represent a healthy balance of gender and generation. Their work is richly diverse, although I perceive strong overlapping concerns and correspondences. Indeed, these correspondences dictated, in part, the final selection. All of these painters exhibit widely, both nationally and internationally, but, with the exception of Kenneth Dingwall, none has exhibited

The fact that the foremost procedural strategy adopted by these artists is formal in no way limits these works to a closed, hermetic system. On the contrary, the focus on the language of abstraction

significantly in Scotland before. These artists have also enjoyed or currently enjoy notable academic careers and, in the case of Jon Thompson and John Golding, parallel careers as curator, writer and art historian. Many prominent artists, including those of the YBA generation, were taught by these artist/teachers at leading art schools such as Goldsmithâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s College and the Royal College of Art in London. It is intended that this exhibition provide an excellent opportunity to introduce their own painting to a new audience in the Scottish Highlands. Simply Painting seeks to assert the continued vigour of a pure or untrammeled form of painting, that is, a practice of painting that draws on the history of immanence and self-reflexivity in the field of abstract or non-objective painterly expression. This exhibition responds to the striking current resurgence of interest in abstract painting and brings together a group of artists deliberately selected from different generations, persuasions and affiliations, who provide testimony to the endurance and endless possibility and invention inherent in this arena of practice.

Andrew Graves Greens and Blues, 2014 80 x 60 cm Oil and wax on gesso panel

Painting, Ontology and Immanence The work in this show quietly, but persuasively, asserts the continued relevance and reinvention of modernist painting practice in the early 21st century and embodies the contemporary cultural currency and reverberation of these earlier moderist tropes. The intention of this focus on abstract painting is not to reinforce the figurative/abstract dyad but rather to extol the virtues of forms of signification that are particular to pure painting and the potential embodied in its material manipulation, or faktura: a critical term that refers to the material aspect of the surface or the quality of how it is made. This material working and re-working might be characterized by the denseness and gravity of substance or, in turn appeal to the levity of the ethereal. Whatever slants the work takes, the forms of signification that these artists deploy sidestep facile modes of meaning production and might be said to resist the language games associated with more economical modes of communication: narrative; resemblance; and image identification or nomination. This refutation of ‘meaning’ is, of course, in itself, replete with significance and ushers in a greatly amplified realm of affective resonance.

So, in eschewing normative processes of identification or image resemblance, the works in Simply Painting are nevertheless replete with a range of other possible associations or non-imagistic/nonnarrative forms of representation. It is important here to make a clear distinction between mere resemblance and representation. Representation in art is all too often confined or yoked to matters of resemblance and the exercise of the mimetic faculties and is commonly set in opposition to abstract art that supposedly doesn’t represent since it doesn’t mimic or depict. I wish to propose here that abstract painting, in particular, possesses the capacity to represent and what is most capable of being represented is an expression of ontology (the philosophical study of the nature of being) or Being itself. It was the great German philosopher of ontology, Martin Heidegger,1 who identified art as the most hospitable site in which to lodge his vocabulary of being.2 These works are forms of representation that, I would argue, visually and substantially articulate, in ways only available to painting, what it is to be human, no less,

and provide us with a lens through which we are capable of envisioning corresponding forms of being/becoming or Being itself as pure immanence. Deleuze offers some clarification:

We will say of pure immanence that it is A LIFE and nothing else. It is not immanence to life, but the immanence that is in nothing is itself a life. A life is the immanence of immanence, absolute immanence: it is complete power, complete bliss.3 In their variety, similarity and difference, the works in Simply Painting may be subtle or assertive, quivering or steady; all however are carefully constructed expressions that chart the elusive, beguiling, shimmering oscillations of Being-in-the-world. The rich concept of Immanence is often cited in relation to abstract painting. Despite the notorious difficulty, and contested understandings of the term, (I freely confess to finding it as abstruse as I do captivating) one can nevertheless appreciate the persuasive force of this coupling. If we are to consider that immanence refers to qualities or properties that are inherent or remain within, then its application to

John Golding K. 4 (Mappa Mundi), 1992 (retouched in 1998) 165 x 234 mm

abstract painting is compelling. Nevertheless, the difficulties persist and the concept was, for the French philosopher, Gilles Deleuze, ‘the most dangerous and most urgent’ theme in the history of philosophy. Without doubt the term ‘immanence’ carries in its wake a complex set of definitions, propositions and problematics. Deleuze addressed the perplexing question of immanence throughout his career and returned to reformulate the concept toward the end of his life in his final short essay, published in the journal Philosophie two months before his death: “Immanence: A Life…”. 4 Deleuze’s challenging late formulation takes immanence beyond subject-object relations and proposes that immanence be thought of as pertaining to immanence alone. During their long collaboration, Deleuze and the radical psychotherapist, Félix Guattari, elaborated the Plane of Immanence as a crucial component of their vital philosophy of political ontology and defined it as follows:

The plane of immanence is not a concept that is or can be thought but rather the image of thought, the image of thought gives itself of what it means to think, to make use of thought, to find one’s bearings in thought. 5

is ‘ceaselessly being woven’ 6 through this endless folding and refolding; creating pleats in matter. This definition also resonates in terms of the singularity of the works in Simply Painting and helps articulate the more recondite, less graspable, more elusive qualities of these paintings. I propose that the works in Simply Painting exemplify rigorous, intelligent, and fiercely uncompromising painting that is nevertheless suffused with measured emotion, impersonal immanence, 7 potentiality and affect. They also exemplify the myriad ways in which painting is akin to philosophy, most especially in the construction of new forms of immanence, and vividly demonstrate the following proposition:

It is this formulation of ‘an image of thought’ that I find most arresting in relation to the works presented in Simply Painting. I contend that each of the works that constitute this exhibition, whatever else they do besides, presents us with a compelling image of thought. As the work unfolds in calculated pursuit of its particular singularity, it simultaneously, unwittingly, engages in the construction of immanence. Elsewhere in their book What is Philosophy?, Deleuze and Guattari proposed that the plane of immanence be thought of as ‘a twofold, a fold of thought and being, of the image of thought and the matter of being’. The plane of immanence

(image left) Vanessa Jackson Reflex, 2013 160 x 122 cm Oil on canvas

If Spinoza is the ‘prince of philosophers’, it is just because his immanence was always yet to be constructed in new vital formations; and that is why in a manner unique among philosophers, the purest metaphysical speculation offers the most intense zone for a nonphilosophical understanding of philosophy by writers and artists. 8

Painting and Thinking I’d like to reflect here on the relationship between thinking and painting and propose that not only does painting embody thinking and that we are indeed able to think through painting, but that painting itself thinks. This rather audacious proposal implies, somewhat contentiously, that painting has agency and that the work emerges through a mutual, active, dialogue between painter and painting and doesn’t simply emerge under the force of the imposition of the painter’s will. Painting too is willful: is resistant, not merely compliant. We might characterize this relation as a beneficial, mutually abrasive, productive one. Thus we assign a degree of autonomy to painting itself and recognise as a consequence that, as a signifying practice, it exerts a compelling sway over this exchange and determines, in large part, the final outcome. What interests me most in this context is the way in which the thinking generated by painting inheres on our own thoughts, persuasions, aptitudes, potentialities and capacities and might be considered to contribute to our sustenance as a kind of nutritive faculty.

propose that we bestow upon paintings the status of Quasi-Persons. This very much chimes with my own take on painting and Graw enlists the French theorists of painting, Louis Marin and Hubert Damisch to support her argument. Both theorists have advanced the idea of painting being ‘a sort of discourse producer… Once it is declared to be able to think it becomes subject-like’. 10 Indeed it was the philosopher Richard Wollheim 11 (incidentally, a great friend of John Golding) who advocated that we should relate to art as we do to one another. He likened the encounter with painting as being as complex and demanding as the encounter with another person and this derived from his view that painting palpably presented the universal human nature (what I am choosing to term an ‘ontology’) in which he strongly believed. As with human encounters, paintings reveal themselves slowly and patiently. It therefore becomes incumbent upon us, as active participants in the interpretive dialogue, to invest the time necessary to secure this revelation. What is revealed through this process is a knowledge: a knowledge of painting practice, and concomitantly, of ourselves. The encounter may prompt to incline us toward the work or disincline any engage-

In her excellent essay, The Value of Painting, 9 Isabelle Graw goes as far as to 10

ment with the propositions and potentialities that the work might deliver. This includes the transformative potential for the political and the ethical to emerge from the interaction. I liken this ‘standing before’ a work to the Face-to-Face encounter brought so forcefully, so demandingly, to our attention by the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas. The Face-to-Face encounter lies at the heart of Levinas’ ethics and, importantly here, the ‘face’ that initiates the call to respond was often not a face as we first think it, (e.g., he referred to the elbow in a Rodin sculpture as a ‘face’). This allows me to propose, reinforcing Graw’s proposition, that the works in this exhibition may be considered as presenting a ‘face’, certainly a (sur)face, that generates demands (The Demands of Art?)12, to which we succumb; are pressed to respond. I consider the surfaces of the works in Simply Painting as being simply the most visible, most apprehendable or, most readily available, component of a depth structure. What lies behind these surfaces and how might this be communicated through the surface are the most

beguiling of questions when we stand before painting, especially abstract painting. The clues are there to behold; and we bring to bear prior knowledge and experience of art and the codes of the visual world in the act of interpretation. We collude; we cooperate; we resist; we are baffled, intrigued and bemused. Insight is generated; moments of illumination; of clarity; then we are once more confounded, frustrated, knocked off balance, explication is denied, then we have moments of encouragement when a symmetry is established and we recognize a correspondence, a reciprocity perhaps; and conviviality carries us forward. These corresponding sympathies are the equivalents of those moments that attach us to others through glimmers of empathy, warmth and understanding. These exchanges in the staged encounter with painting; one being aligning with another being, or the quasi-subject of painting, supports the idea that painting indeed has agency. In a recent interview in relation to the exhibition O-N-T-O-L-O-G-Y, the art historian and painter Brandon Taylor13 wrote:

For me, my agency comes to an absolute termination when the work is finished. After that it is up to the work alone to be responsible – to be an agent, precisely, one that can make demands of a viewer and have demands made of it. 14 11

In support of this claim, I contend that what the painter produces, is a set of circumstances, particular to their own painterly concerns, that simultaneously evacuate the resistance that would otherwise impede the work from doing the ‘work’s work’… and generate the energies necessary to bring it into being; into presence… birth to presence… and thereby making painting capable of articulating its own demands. The sense in which painting (more than other art practices?) might be thought to embody or even exemplify Being has a long and traceable philosophical and theoretical history. Despite this, an explanation for this strange phenomenon continues to elude our understanding:

Personally, I prefer to think of painting as a semiotic or signifying practice that overcomes the unhappily reductive binary opposition of figurative /abstract. If we think instead in terms of a suppler semiotics, a manipulable ‘system of signs’, marks, traces and gestures, we overcome some of the more troubling restrictions of the term ‘abstract’. It is my hope, indeed my belief, that this exhibition demonstrates that far from stubbornly inhabiting a closed or hermetic system these works stir up rich and complex, albeit recondite, connections with other forms of thinking like philosophy, music, poetic and psychoanalytic practices. The singular paintings in this

‘Today it remains a puzzle for the artist; how ‘being’ can assert itself in the art-object, and how process, or becoming, can play a part in the final, instantaneous presence of a work as the viewer comes to understand it. These questions, rather than those concerning the nature of the image, strike me as interesting in the art of today’. 15 Although I have casually used the term ‘abstract’ throughout this text in a rather uncontested manner and partly in deference to custom. I am acutely aware notwithstanding, that it is a term that bristles with unsettled questions and assumptions.

exhibition, through their subtleties and stark intensities, have in common the capacity to provoke nourishing and vivifying responses in the attentive viewer and extend our understanding of ourselves, our world, and our being. Jim Mooney 12

Endnotes 1

See Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson, New York: Harper & Row, 1962.

Isabelle Graw, “The Value of Painting: Notes on Unspecificity, Indexicality, and Highly Valuable Quasi-Persons”, Thinking through Painting: Reflexivity and Agency beyond the Canvas, (eds.) Isabelle Graw, Daniel Birnbaum and Nikolaus Hirsch. Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2012.

See Jeff Collins and Howard Selina, Introducing Heidegger, Icon Books, 1999. 3

Gilles Deleuze, “Immanence: A Life…” Pure Immanence: Essays on a Life, John Rajchman (ed.), trans. Anne Boyman, New York: Zone Books, 2001, p 27. 4

Ibid. p 54.

See Richard Wollheim, Art and Its Objects: an Introduction to Aesthetics. New York: Harper & Row, 1968.

Ibid.

Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, “The Plane of Immanence”, What is Philosophy? trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell, New York: Columbia University Press, 1991, p 37. 6

Ibid. p 59.

See Max Raphael, The Demands of Art, trans. Norbert Gutterman. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1968. 13

See also Brandon Taylor, After Constructivism, London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014.

Ibid.

The term ‘impersonal immanence’ is used by John Rajchman in relation to Mira Schendel’s belief that “her works could not be simple ‘objects’. They had to reach out and affect others in a manner at once singular and impersonal’, and so supposed ‘radically passive’ affective (rather than active, assertive) relations with others.” John Rajchman, “Mira Schendel’s Immanence”, Mira Schendel, (eds.) Tanya Barson, Taisa Palhares. London: Tate Publishing, 2013, p 52.

Brandon Taylor interview, http://tractionmagazine.co.uk/ post/120035473309/086-celia-cookvanessa-jackson-brandon-taylor 15

Ibid.

Kenneth Dingwall

(left) Opening Passage, 2015 180 x 150 cm Oil on linen (right) Protective Front, 2010 61 x 10 x 10 cm Acrylic on wood

John Golding

Salome,1966 185 x 140 cm

Square II,1965-6 162.5 x 162.5 cm

Andrew Graves

Flowers, 2015 70 x 60 cm Oil and wax on gesso panel

Dark Street, 2014 80 x 60 cm Oil and wax on gesso panel

Jane Harris

(above) Blue Bleu, 2013 Diptych 102 x 164 cm each oil on canvas (right) Velvet in Orbit, 2014 Quadriptich 50 x 50 cm each Oil on canvas

Yvonne Hindle

Melt Down series no. 2, 2014 60 x 49 cm Acrylic on canvas

Melt down, 2013 108 x 80 cm Acrylic on canvas

Vanessa Jackson

Lighten Up, 2014 183 x 204 cm

Look on the Bright Side, 2014 183 x 204 cm

Rosa Lee

Interference, 2000 174 x 148 cm Oil on canvas

Braid II, 2001 47 x 43.5 cm Oil on canvas

Jon Thompson

The Toronto Cycle #11, CADENCE and DISCORD (GdiB) Traer los Sentidos, 2010-2011 135 x 152 cm Acrylic and oil on canvas

The Toronto Cycle #17, CADENCE and DISCORD (PC) Traer los Sentidos, 2010-2011 135 x 152 cm Acrylic and oil on canvas

Biographies Kenneth Dingwall (1938) studied at the Edinburgh College of Art (195560) and subsequently taught there for many years before moving to the United States, where he lived and worked for twenty years and was appointed Visiting Professor at Cleveland Art Institute (1978-79) and Chair of Painting/Dean of Fine Art (1988-2003). He returned to Scotland to paint full-time in 2003. Individual exhibitions include the Mayor Gallery London, Graeme Murray Gallery, Edinburgh, Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh, Peter Noser Galerie, Zurich, Katherina Rich Perlow Gallery, New York, Knoedler, New York, Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland, USA, Castelluccio della Foce, Siena and the Pier Arts Centre, Orkney. Dingwall’s work is represented in many public collections including the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, Saatchi Collection, London, Arts Council of Great Britain, Cleveland Museum of Art, USA, and The British Council.

Institute where he subsequently taught from 1959-81. His doctoral thesis on Cubism (1959) remains a foundational text. In 1981 he was appointed Senior Tutor in Painting at the RCA. Golding exhibited his painting internationally and his work is represented in numerous prestigious collections. He organised groundbreaking exhibitions include Matisse Picasso, Tate Modern (2002) and Picasso: Sculptor/Painter, Tate Britain, (1992), Picasso’s Picassos, an exhibition from the Musée Picasso, Paris, Hayward Gallery (1981), and The Sculpture and Drawings of Henri Matisse, Hayward Gallery, London and Museum of Modern Art, New York (1984). Despite these towering achievements, underpinned by exquisite scholarship, Golding considered painting as his primary occupation. Andrew Graves (1967) studied at Kingston University (BA), 1990 and Middlesex University (MA), 2005 where he is currently completing a PhD. He has exhibited widely including Switzerland, Belgium, France, USA, South Korea and the UK. ‘I make paintings and drawings. I usually use oil paint, but sometimes tempera, mostly on panel. They are

John Golding (1929-2012) born in Hastings and educated in Mexico and Canada is a world-renowned art historian and curator. He studied at the University of Toronto and the Courtauld 30

abstract, but for me always contain a certain figurative reading. A geometric grid in a painting may be derived from the textile of a shirt, or an outline of a landscape. My paintings work through an understanding of abstraction, specifically in the context of European and mid-century American painting.’

to the books Paint Theory Paint Practice (Lee Press) and Base and Awesome (Article Press and Ikon Gallery) and exhibits internationally. She is “interested in paint and its material qualities, painting that sits on the edge, somewhere between representation and matter.” The oval shaped canvas offers possibilities of being both perceived as object and porthole. To emphasise this oscillation in more recent work the edges of the canvases have become physically built up with precarious stacks and accumulations of paint. For Hindle, the oval paintings are melancholic bodies, like satellites, moons or small worlds that have their own internal temporality. A solo exhibition at Gallery North in Newcastle is forthcoming.

Jane Harris (1956) studied at the Slade School of Art 1979–1981 and Goldsmiths College 1989–1991. She has taught at numerous art schools including Goldsmith’s College and the Royal Academy Schools where she is currently a Visiting Professor. She has shown extensively in New Zealand, Germany, France, USA, Italy, Switzerland, Brazil, the UK and presently lives in France. Commenting on Barry Schwabsky’s term “rococo minimalism” deployed in relation to her work, she states: ‘I like it as a mental image of what would be considered historically as two irreconcilable positions occupying the same space. My paintings are a culmination of many pairs of opposites interacting – while at first glance they may appear static in their symmetrical arrangements, it is this multiplicity of crossovers that makes for the rococo dynamic.’ www.janeharris.net

Vanessa Jackson born in Peaslake, (1953). Lives and works in London. Educated at St Martins School of Art and the Royal College of Art. Jackson has shown nationally and internationally. Recent Solo Shows include the North House Gallery, Manningtree and Studio 1.1, and Wall Painting commissions for the Café Gallery CGP ‘Throwing Shapes’ and ‘Vertigo in Three Parts’ for Sadler’s Wells Theatre. A book of her wall paintings, ‘OFF THE WALL’, was published in 2014 by the Pavillionary Press. Jackson was Head of Painting at Winchester School of Art, and then Research and

Yvonne Hindle (1967) is a senior lecturer at the Birmingham Institute of Art and Design. She co-edited and contributed 31

MA tutor at he Royal College of Art and most recently Senior Tutor at the Royal Academy Schools. She is presently chair of the Abbey Council and a member of the British School at Rome Fine Art Faculty. www.vanessajackson.co.uk

Birmingham City University and Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen. He taught at Middlesex University and the Royal College of Art for some 20 years where, respectively, he held the posts of Reader in Theory and Practice of Fine Art and Senior Research Tutor in Painting. Mooney was elected Fellow of the Royal College of Art in 1995. He sits on the Board of Directors of Timespan Museum and Gallery, Helmsdale.

Rosa Lee (1957-2009) studied Art History at Sussex University, and painting at St Martins and the Royal College of Art. She created paintings deploying a painstaking process akin to lace-making, creating a hybrid language of opulent sensuality and geometric anonymity. ‘Rosa Lee’s paintings can be seen as an attempt to give form to those areas of experience and knowledge suppressed by the constraints of rationalism… cradled within the geometry of Lee’s paintings are flashes of the unruly, dark, wanton or barbarous aspects or the irrational that are associated with the feminine.’ (Sarah Kent, An Introduction. Rosa Lee, Todd Gallery 1990). A posthumous exhibition was presented at the Eagle Gallery in London in 2012.

Jon Thomspon (1936) studied at St Martin’s 1953-57, Royal Academy 195760 British School in Rome 1960–62. He is an internationally renowned teacher and curator who, as Head of Goldsmith’s in the 1980’s taught many of the YBA generation. He was Head of Fine Art at the Jan van Eyck Akademie in Maastricht from 1989-92 and Research Professor at Middlesex University from 1998-2006. He curated highly influential landmark exhibitions including: Falls the Shadow, and Gravity and Grace for the Hayward Gallery and Inside Worlds Outside for the Whitechapel Gallery and Fundacio La Caixa, Madrid and published ‘How to Read a Modern Painting’, 2007 and ‘The Collected Writings of Jon Thompson’, 2011. Since retiring from teaching he has presented a series of successful shows at Anthony Reynolds Gallery, London & exhibited internationally. www.anthonyreynolds.com

Jim Mooney (1955) is an artist and writer who studied at Edinburgh College of Art (1973-78) and the Royal College of Art where he gained his MA (RCA) in 1981 and PhD (RCA) in 1999. He was awarded the Prix de Rome in Painting 1981-83 and was a Member of the Abbey Council (1998-2009). He holds Visiting Professorships in Art at 32

Curator’s Acknowlegments I am extremely grateful to the artists, their executors and gallery representatives for consenting to participate in this exhibition, thereby making Simply Painting possible. In particular, I would like to thank them for their enthusiasm and spirit of goodwill and generosity extended at all stages of this project. I would like to acknowledge the great help provided by Jenna Lundin of The John Golding Artistic Trust. My thanks also go to Paul Zuckerman (Art Fund), John Golding’s executor, for agreeing to release works and to Bruno Wollheim for helping me secure the loan of John’s works.

My thanks are also due to Flora Latta for the assistance given with Yvonne Hindle’s work. Last, but not least, I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to the High Life Highland Exhibitions Unit at Inverness Museum & Art Gallery: to Cathy Shankland, Exhibitions Officer; Lucy Woodley & Kirsten Body, Exhibition Coordinators. I am most grateful to Cathy for the initial invitation to act as Guest Curator and for all the subsequent support given by this wonderful team. Their experience, professionalism, good humour, infinite patience and practical help have made the initial idea of Simply Painting a pleasure to bring to fruition.

I am also indebted to Nadine Lockyer and Anthony Reynolds of The Anthony Reynolds Gallery, London for facilitating the loan to the exhibition of two of Jon Thompson’s paintings. Equally, I am grateful to Emma Hill of Eagle Gallery/EMH Arts, London for enabling me to borrow the work of Rosa Lee. I am also indebted to Mark Graham, executor of Rosa Lee’s estate for authorizing the loan and to Howard Rogers and Vanessa Jackson for arranging the loan of work.

Publication produced by Inverness Museum & Art Gallery to coincide with the Simply Painting exhibition: 29 August - 10 October 2015 Inverness Museum & Art Gallery 17 October - 21 November 2015 Swanson Gallery, Thurso Cover image: Yvonne Hindle Melt down series no.3 (detail), 2015 56 x 45 cm Acrylic on canvas Image credits: Kenneth Dingwall courtesy of the artist & photo: Chris Dingwall-Jones John Golding courtesy of The John Golding Artistic Trust Andrew Graves courtesy of the artist Jane Harris courtesy of the artist Yvonne Hindle courtesy of the artist Vanessa Jackson courtesy of the artist Rosa Lee couresty of Eagle Gallery/ EMH Arts, London and the artist’s estate Jon Thompson courtesy of the artist and The Anthony Reynolds Gallery, London

Printed by J Thomson Printers, Inverness ISBN 978-0-9934004-0-7 © All images are copyright of the artists © Text copyright of Jim Mooney High Life Highland is a company limited by guarantee registered in Scotland No. SC407011 and is a registered charity No. SC042593.