Calum McClure is an artist who has always been drawn to paint the edges of the urban landscape. In Le Tiers-Paysage, McClure has developed these ideas further, using pathways through the city of Glasgow as a vehicle to explore the interplay between natural and built environments. He has produced a new body of work which ranges in style; each subject merits a particular technical response, producing both paintings and monotypes to describe his practice. The Scottish Gallery is delighted to welcome Calum McClure back for his sixth solo exhibition.
Calum McClureOverall, I feel this exhibition is more focused than previous ones, as well as being more diverse in approach; some works have become more complex in their abstraction, and this is due to working on them solidly for weeks at a time, without pause. There is also a group of monotypes and more representational paintings in response to the idea of Le Tiers-Paysage. I still enjoy this variety of expression, since every atmosphere I encounter needs to be expressed in a slightly different mode.
Calum McClureMoon and Wind is of an entrance to Pollock Park, which became one of the places I went for longer walks during the first lockdown. The slightly frenzied, gestural application of the paint tries to convey both the wind on the evening I took the photograph and the unsettling feeling at the beginning of the pandemic. I was thinking of Degas’ Woman at a Window, painted during the siege of Paris, which gains added poignancy when one knows the sitter is cut off from the city outside by the occupying Prussian army. The saplings and trees in Moon and Wind are similar to Degas’ window, constricting the viewer like a fence or cage from the world beyond. These lattices of trees and branches in the foreground of my paintings have become a leitmotif in the exhibition, seeking to convey that sense of confinement and isolation.
Le Tiers-Paysage continues until the 25th September. Click here to purchase the accompanying catalogue.
