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framed dimensions: 68 x 57 cm
signed lower left
EXHIBITED:
Edinburgh Festival Exhibition, The Scottish Gallery, 1985
Market Day is a daring composition in which forms gradually resolve into the suggestion of figures, echoing the urban and the rhythms of the natural world. Painted in Lennel, where James Cumming settled after retiring from Edinburgh College of Art, this painting captures a sense of community, a gathering of people brought together in a shared moment. The imagery recalls elements from his celebrated Hebridean paintings yet is likely connected to his final major project, the monumental mural The Community: A Festival of Time, installed in the Low Port Centre, Linlithgow. The mural measured an impressive six by nine metres, and captured a timeless vision of society through 39 figures, each symbolising an aspect of communal life. In Market Day, that same spirit of connection is distilled into a single, layered scene, where place, people, and atmosphere merge.
As a painter, James Cumming was possessed of a singular and highly personal vision. Several phases of interest took place in his work, Still Life, Portraits, Space Age, Puppets, Circus and the Electron Microscope brought forth another series of works concerning the visual nature of living cells. The hand of the draughtsman is always very much in evidence, an assured line in absolute control of the formal arrangement. James Cumming was born in Dunfermline and studied at Edinburgh College of Art. In the early 1950s a travelling scholarship took him for a year to Callanish on the Isle of Lewis leading to his acclaimed series of Hebridean paintings. His considered and meticulously wrought style became concerned with geometry, structure, and abstraction. He also began to lecture on a regular basis at Edinburgh College of Art from 1950. Whilst artist in residence at Hospitalfield in Arbroath in 1960-61, his work and language in abstraction had a significant impact on John Byrne and Alexander Fraser. His most distinctive work of the 1960s is rich in colour, where it is employed, but essentially tonal. His later career was more concerned with natural and cellular forms, vibrant colour and a more prominent geometry.
The Scottish Gallery exhibitions: 1962, 1971, 1972 (Festival), 1985 (Festival), 1995 (Memorial)
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