Duncan Shanks | Transience | June 2019 | The Scottish Gallery

DUNCAN SHANKS TRANSIENCE

THE

SCOTTISH

GALLERY

CONTEMPORARY ART SINCE 1842

Duncan Shanks Transience 1–26 June 2019 16 Dundas Street·Edinburgh EH3 6HZ +44 (0) 131 558 1200 mail@scottish-gallery.co.uk www.scottish-gallery.co.uk

DUNCAN SHANKS TRANSIENCE

TH E S C O T T I S H G A L L E R Y 2019 2

‘P I C T U R E S W H I C H C A P T U R E T H E S P I R I T O F C H A N G E , B U T A R E I M M U TA B L E ’

previous pages

1 Portal acrylic on paper·70 x 100 cm opposite

2 Heat Haze acrylic on paper·56.5 x 70 cm

This exhibition is Shanks’ tenth with The Scottish Gallery since the year 2000 and is in one sense no different from those that have come before. Each has embraced the idea of a journey with no starting point nor ending, the cycle of change, of death and regeneration.

Transience may be his subject and his title for this body of work, but it is not what he has made: his work is as permanent as an ancient primitive sculpture or cave painting; his response to transience, in the crucible of creativity, are pictures which capture the spirit of change, but are immutable.

In this catalogue Shanks has selected quotations from his sketchbooks. These are revealing and not something he might have been comfortable doing as a younger man.

They show how his reading and kinship with artists, writers and musicians has encouraged him to stick to a path of intense study and work.

Shanks is ambivalent about finishing or showing his work. In this sense Transience is just a body of work wrenched from the artist’s studio. But in another sense, it is the magical, temporary coming together of waymarks in the artist’s journey, in his deep engagement with nature and his own wild garden. It is his selection to be seen together for a few weeks before the work is dispersed, a paradigm of the greater process of growth and atomisation which is Shanks lifelong obsession. guy peploe 5

3 Still Evening acrylic on paper·81 x 111 cm

7

4 Riverside Garden acrylic on paper·56 x 65 cm

9

WHERE ARE THE SONGS OF SPRING? Awaken, awaken, all ye flowers, To joy! from Arnold Schoenberg’s Gurreleide

5 Spring acrylic on paper·81 x 111 cm

11

6 Crow acrylic on paper·29 x 29 cm

7 Glare acrylic on paper·70 x 56 cm

12

13

14

8 Broken Symmetry

9 Garden of Delights

acrylic on paper·56 x 62 cm

acrylic on paper·56 x 64 cm

WILD GARDEN I see a rose, that strange thing, and what’s there But a seeming something coloured on the air With transparencies that make up me, Thickened to existence by my notice. from Norman MacCaig’s Ego

10 Enclosed Garden acrylic on paper·76 x 99 cm

17

11 Into the Garden – Shall we Follow? acrylic on paper·70 x 100 cm

18

12 Sun Dance acrylic on paper·70 x 100 cm

19

13 After Rain acrylic on paper·70 x 91 cm

20

14 Wild Roses acrylic on paper·122 x 135 cm

22

15 Hedge Parsley

16 Bees and Butterflies

17 Butterflies and Buddleias

acrylic on paper·16.5 x 18 cm

acrylic on paper·20 x 20 cm

acrylic on paper·19.5 x 19.5 cm

18 Lush Growth acrylic on paper·19 x 19.5 cm

23

24

19 Delphinium and Poppies

20 Butterflies and Buddleia

acrylic on paper·56 x 65 cm

acrylic on paper·56 x 59 cm

25

21 Rowan and Lilies acrylic on paper·56 x 70 cm detail opposite

27

22 Angelica and Peacock acrylic on paper·54.5 x 76 cm

23 Daisies acrylic on paper·68 x 93 cm

28

29

24 Mid Summer acrylic on paper·70 x 100 cm

30

25 Autumn acrylic on paper·70 x 100 cm

31

32

26 Rainy Day

27 Sun and Showers

acrylic on paper·70 x 69 cm

acrylic on paper·54 x 74 cm

33

RIVERBANK O let them be left, wildness and wet; Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet. from Gerard Manley Hopkins’ Inversnaid

28 Riverbank acrylic on paper·122 x 152 cm

35

29 Winter Sun acrylic on paper·55 x 75 cm

30 Sunrise acrylic on paper·55 x 75 cm

36

37

31 The Flakes Fall Faster acrylic on paper·51 x 63.5 cm

32 Riverbank Trees acrylic on paper·35 x 100 cm

38

39

33 Trees by the River acrylic on paper·35 x 100 cm

40

41

42

34 Abundance

35 Floating Past

acrylic on paper·58.5 x 59 cm

acrylic on paper·52 x 63 cm

43

36 Goosander acrylic on paper·57 x 70 cm

44

37 Autumn Cherry acrylic on paper·49.5 x 94 cm

45

38 Dusk acrylic on paper·78 x 70 cm

39 Ice on the River acrylic on paper·75 x 99 cm

46

47

STORM … the rain comes Down like a dropscene Now there comes catharsis, the cleansing downpour Breaking the blossoms of our dated fancies Our old sentimentality and whimsicality Loves of the morning Blackness at half past eight, the night’s precursor Clouds like falling masonary and lightening’s lavish Annunciation, the sword of mad archangel Flashes from the scabbard from Louis Macneice’s June Thunder

40 The White Cloud acrylic on paper·99 x 136 cm

49

41 The Black Cloud Carries The Sun Away acrylic on paper·67 x 150 cm

50

51

42 Thunder Storm acrylic on paper·56 x 150 cm

53

43 The Storm’s Centre acrylic on paper· 69 x 69 cm

44 A Storm of Birds 54

acrylic on paper·68.5 x 81 cm

45  Blown in the Wind acrylic on paper¡41 x 79 cm detail opposite

57

DA R K N E S S & L I G H T — But there’s a tree, of many one, A single field which I have looked upon, Both of them speak of something that is gone. from William Wordsworth’s Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

46 Moonlight and Moths acrylic on paper·122 x 152 cm

59

60

47 Sunset Glow

48 Dark River

acrylic on paper·57 x 57 cm

acrylic on paper·57 x 57 cm

61

49 Last Berries acrylic on paper·122 x 136 cm detail opposite

63

50 Twa Corbies acrylic on paper·56 x 55 cm

64

51 Flowers for the Bees acrylic on paper·55 x 64.5 cm

65

52 Black Bull acrylic on paper·41 x 41.5 cm

53 Rage Against the Dying of the Light acrylic on paper·76 x 56 cm

66

67

54 Bones of Man and Beast acrylic on paper·153 x 244 cm

In my beginning is my end. In succession House rise and fall, crumble over extended, Are removed, destroyed, restores, or in their place Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.

Old stone to new buildings, old timber to new fires.

Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth Which is already flesh, fur and faeces, Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf.

From T.S. Eliot’s East Coker, Four Quartets

DUNCAN SHANKS RSA RSW RGI Born Airdrie, 1937

2007 In a Summer Garden, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh

Awards

Selected Private Collections

Studied Glasgow School of Art, 1955–60

2009 In Search of Time Past, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh

Scottish Arts Council Award

Works in many private and corporate collections in

Post Diploma and Travelling Scholarship to Italy, 1960

2012 Across a Painted Sky, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh

Latimer Award and Macaulay Prize, Royal Scottish Academy

Britain, Germany and North America including:

Part-time lecturer at Glasgow School of Art until 1979

2013 Drawing the Year, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh

Arthur Andersen & Co, Glasgow

Lives in the Clyde Valley

2015 The Poetry of Place, Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow

Torrance Award, Cargill Award and Macfarlane Charitable Trust Award, Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts May Marshall Brown Award, Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour

Clydesdale Bank plc

Provost’s Prize for Contemporary Art, Goma, 1996,

Halifax Bank

Member of: Royal Scottish Academy Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts

Solo Exhibitions

1981 The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh 1984 The Fine Art Society, Glasgow and Edinburgh 1988 Falling Water, Talbot Rice Art Centre, University of Edinburgh; Crawford Centre, University of St Andrews; MacLaurin Art Gallery, Ayr; catalogue introduction by Duncan Macmillan 1990 Glasgow Art Gallery – Contemporary Art Season 1991 The Fine Art Society, Glasgow and Edinburgh 1 991–2 Patterns of Flight, Wrexham Arts Centre Touring Exhibition; catalogue introduction by Roger Billcliffe 1992 Roger Billcliffe Fine Art, Glasgow 1994 The Creative Process, Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow; catalogue introduction by Chris Allan 1994 Hill of Fire, Roger Billcliffe Fine Art, Glasgow 1997 Of Wet and of Wildness, The Scottish Gallery 2000 New Paintings, The Scottish Gallery 2002 Beyond the Valley, artLondon, with The Scottish Gallery

Works on Paper 1957–2013, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh

Seasons and Storms, Roger Billcliffe Gallery, Glasgow

2017 Winter Journey, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh 2018 Wanderer, Roger Billcliffe Gallery, Glasgow

Royal Bank of Scotland Award, RGI, 2001

2019 Transience, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh

Selected Public Collections

Selected Group Exhibitions

Dundee Art Gallery and Museum

1975 Five Glasgow Painters, Edinburgh Arts Centre

City of Edinburgh Council

1 981–2 Contemporary Art from Scotland, Touring Exhibition arranged

by The Scottish Gallery Scottish Painting, Toulouse

Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation Glasgow Museums Resource Centre

1984 Weather, Scottish Arts Council Travelling Gallery

Government Art Collection

1985 About Landscape, Edinburgh Festival Show, Talbot Rice Art Centre Western Approaches, Touring Exhibition of Contemporary Scottish Art, Rio de Janeiro

High Life Highland Exhibitions Unit, Inverness

1986 Ten Scottish Painters, London 1988 The Scottish Show, Oriel 31 Touring Exhibition, Wales 1991 Landscape to Art, Four Scottish Artists, Dundee Art Gallery 2000 Scottish Landscape, The Scottish Gallery 2003 Six RSA Artists, University of Central Florida 2015 Modern Masters IV, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh

Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre

Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea

Lillie Art Gallery, Milngavie Low Parks Museum, Hamilton Pitlochry Festival Theatre

Bank of Japan Diageo Scotland Prudential Reader’s Digest, New York Rowntree’s Royal Bank of Scotland William Teacher and Sons Ltd Liter atur e 1990 William Hardie, Scottish Painting: 1837 to the Present, London Duncan Macmillan, Scottish Art: 1460–1990, Edinburgh 1993 William Hare, Contemporary Painting in Scotland, Edinburgh 1996 Duncan Macmillan, Scottish Art in the 20th Century, Edinburgh 2015 Anne Dulau Beveridge, The Poetry of Place, Duncan Shanks’s sketchbooks and the Upper Clyde, Glasgow

Royal Scottish Academy of Art and Architecture, Edinburgh The Stewarty Museum, Kirkcudbright University of Edinburgh Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow University of Stirling University of St Andrews

2004 Along an Overgrown Path, The Scottish Gallery 2006 Air, Fire and Rain, Roger Billcliffe Gallery, Glasgow 70

71

55 Lost in the Forest collage and acrylic on paper·34 x 34 cm

Published by The Scottish Gallery for the exhibition Duncan Shanks: Transience held at 16 Dundas Street from 1 to 26 June 2019 ISBN 978 1 912900 01 5 Artworks © Duncan Shanks 2o19 Catalogue © The Scottish Gallery 2019 All rights reserved Photography by John McKenzie Designed and typeset in ATF Garamond by Dalrymple Printed in Scotland by J Thomson Colour Printers Front cover: detail from Spring [cat.5]

THETHE

SCOTTISH SCOTTISH

GALLERY GALLERY

CONTEMPORARY CONTEMPORARY ARTART SINCE SINCE 1842 1842 16 DUNDAS 16 DUNDAS STREET STREET • EDINBURGH • EDINBURGH EH3EH3 6HZ6HZ +44+44 (0) 131 (0) 131 558558 1200 1200 • mail@scottish-gallery.co.uk • mail@scottish-gallery.co.uk • scottish-gallery.co.uk • scottish-gallery.co.uk

73

Repro: 6mm spine allowed

THE

SCOTTISH

GALLERY

CONTEMPORARY ART SINCE 1842