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James Cumming’s interest in the theme of puppets can be traced back to the early 1970s when a painting entitled Punch and Judy appeared with other new works which at the time hinted at a move away from cells and the microscope might be imminent. In the catalogue for his Middlesbrough Retrospective in 1987 he wrote: The puppet series was begun in 1972 with satire in mind, requiring near portrait likenesses which implied reality rather than defined it. The sequence grew to multinational characters, Dutch, Turkish or Indian, public or fictional figures.
Cumming had been in Inda in 1946 and Puppets, Poona includes the archetypes of the doe-eyed Tamil, an Anglo Indian of some importance and a caricatural Indian Army officer. Puppets, Poona was also the leading image for his Festival exhibition at The Scottish Gallery in 1985.
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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