Gordon Bryce has quietly emerged over the last thirty years or so as the Scottish painter who carries the torch for contemporary belle peinture, a torch borne in previous generations by Anne Redpath and SJ Peploe. He is an easel painter with an endless fascination for his chosen medium, for composition and the subtle expressions of familiar landscape. His paintings do not shout for attention, they are the antithesis of the current vogue for artworks arising out of identity politics, instead giving us pause to recognise the value of simple pleasure and truth; his technical gifts are great, but they have never been set to serve the ego. In this modest exhibition of recent paintings, to be displayed in our garden gallery downstairs, we are reminded of the enduring value of well-made paintings which are of their time but timeless.
