FEATURED ARTISTS
Summer 2010
I am self taught
I do not like fashion culture
I do not hate anyone – Billy Childish
Billy Childish is, famously, the name of the man inside Tracey Emin’s tent, but Billy Childish is so much more than that. He is more, even, than the man whose influence Emin acknowledged in the formative years of her career. Billy Childish is a cult figure in America, Japan and Europe. He is the most prolific painter, poet and song writer of his generation. He is a man who refuses to have either his spellings or his world view ‘put right’ in any way, working free of limits, restraint, compromise and fashion. (He was welcomed into St Martin’s School of Art under a ‘genius clause’ and later expelled due to his maverick working methods.)
Lavishing thick, lush strokes of paint onto the canvas, Childish creates passionate and almost sculptural work. His canvasses display both the swirling to life of the Impressionists and the dark, savage brushstrokes of the Expressionists. A Van Gogh-like obsession with colour rages from Childish’s flowers, whilst the figures in his paintings are lonely, thoughtful people, created by an obstinately individual artist.
An iconic figure in 21st Century art, Childish co-wrote the Stuckist Manifesto with Charles Thomson: ‘Against conceptualism, hedonism and the cult of the ego’. Like Expressionist Edvard Munch, Childish explores his ‘neurosis and innocence’ (Stuckist Manifesto) through his art.
Billy Childish’s global profile is expected to soar further in 2010, due to a major exhibition of his work in White Columns, New York, and a rare exhibition in ICA, London. ‘The Stuckist engages with the moment’ (Stuckist Manifesto) and the art world, as it – arguably – creaks slowly away from the dead sharks of Conceptualism, is engaging with Childish right now.
As Childish says of his paintings: ‘My stuff isn’t made up. It isn’t bullshit; it’s the real thing’. Balman Gallery agrees.
JOHN BELLANY (CBE)
‘I paint from my very soul and I want to move people, to get inside their hearts,' John Bellany
John Bellany studied painting at Edinburgh College of Art from 1960 to 1965. An Andrew Grant Scholarship took him to Paris in 1962 and he later studied at the Royal College of Art, London. In 1986, Bellany was awarded the first solo show ever at the National Portrait Gallery, London (NPG) and the NPG also commissioned his famous portrait of Ian Botham. Born in Port Seton in Scotland, Bellany's paintings often feature the work-roughened faces of the fishing community. Whilst experiences such as a visit to Buchenwald concentration camp, and later a liver transplant, ensure his paintings are renowned for their great emotional and allegorical depth, his recent move to Barga in Italy has resulted in a more optimistic aspect.
A Senior Fellow of the Royal College of Art, London, John Bellany is exhibited widely at major galleries, including the Metropolitan Museum, New York, and the Tate Gallery, London. The awarding of a CBE in 1994 demonstrates the level of Bellany's influence as a leading British artist.
PETER HOWSON
‘God can still be found among decay and decadence,' Peter Howson
Madonna, Bob Geldof and David Bowie are all collectors of Howson's work. Howson was a central figure in the new ‘The Glasgow Boys', a group formed in the 1980’s, working in Glasgow and influenced by this revolutionary, radical and important art movement. This radical nature is clear from his career moves: he left the Glasgow School of Art at 17 to join the British Army, Lothian Branch of the Royal Fusiliers, and travel the world. Later, he worked as a labourer and landscape gardener, growing to love body building. This physicality is embodied in Howsen's art and his boldly delineated black and red figures are fearsome and overbearing.
Howson travelled to Bosnia in the 1990's to work on canvasses for the Imperial War Museum's war exhibition. He suffered hallucinations and dysentery, but with typical gusto, returned to finish the commission and to salvage his mental health. Later, he worked with John Cox, the director of Scottish Opera, on his production of ‘Don Giovanni', creating a fiercely dark and original set to act as a backdrop to Giovanni's wild and debased life experiences.
Peter Howson is exhibited widely, by John McEnroe in his New York gallery amongst others. He is listed as one of the 500 most important artists in Phaiden's ‘20th Century Art Book'.
GRAEME WILCOX
‘Suited men are like stills from an unknown film,’ Art Company, Scotland, of Graeme Wilcox
Graeme Wilcox graduated from the Glasgow School of Art in 1993 and has exhibited in London, Edinburgh, Russia and Paris since. His paintings are strong, haunting and mysterious. The viewer often has the unsettling experience of staring into a Wilcox painting to find a still, blinded face which refuses to stare back or to communicate visually in any conventional way. Black and red, or dark blue, backgrounds frequently layer further tensions thickly onto the canvas. These paintings often encapsulate a frozen moment.
Wilcox was a finalist at the Celeste Art Prize, London 2006 and was also awarded the Glasgow Art Club Fellowship Award. He received the Arthur Andersen Prize for Best Young Artist at RGI Annual Exhibition and the Glasgow Art Club Fellowship Award, 2004, all evidence of a dramatically evolving reputation as an artist.
Graeme Wilcox’s works can be found in private collections in the UK, USA and Canada and in public collections in Petrezovodsk, Russia and the Gulf State of Qatar.
DYLAN LISLE
‘The strong chiaroscuro lighting of Caravaggio and the tactile dynamics of Titian’s drapery have been of great influence to me,’ Dylan Lisle
Lisle studied Fine Art at Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen. His works have the dramatic power of the Renaissance Masters, but his canvasses are romantic and accessible also. Lisle also admires Dutch artists, Vermeer and Rembrandt, and his subjects’ faces share the light, clearly painted, creamy beauty of Vermeer’s. Monochromatic underpainting gives his paintings richness and depth. These lushly-painted figurative works also reflect Lisle’s interest in anatomy, and the striking poses give a bold, 21st Century edge to his work.
Dylan Lisle’s work has been widely exhibited in the Medici Gallery, London, Edinburgh and New York. This popular artist rightly prides himself on both skill and technique.
ANTHONY SCULLION
‘Soulscapes’
Anthony Scullion is a graduate of Glasgow School of Art, 1992. He lived and was widely exhibited in South Africa and returned to Britain in 1998.
Scullion’s figures are darkly clad, richly painted and shadowy, as he aims to see beneath the flesh of his subjects. Scullion has studied Rembrandt’s chiaroscuro and Francis Bacon’s distorted faces and figures. The paintings are so reworked and layered that they seem to bleed and to live in a deeper world than our own, and so are often dubbed ‘soulscapes’. The lighter coloured space around the subjects, as above, highlights the mysterious and unique figure at the centre.
Anthony Scullion was awarded the James Torrence Memorial Award by the Royal Glasgow Institute of the fine Arts in 1991 and shortlisted for the Garrick-Milne Prize 1997. His appointment as a member of the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts further demonstrates his status as an important Scottish artist.