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In the endless natural sequence, which colours the Scottish landscape, there is one constant and that is change. Only in front of nature with paint on paper can I throw caution to the wind and act on impulse. There is still a thrill as a painter, in catching a moment in time, when the familiar is transformed and the mundane becomes magical. It is an act of discovery, revealing the endless pictorial possibilities of the valley around me, when seasonal changes in my riverside garden become a kaleidoscope of colour. I drew the same view almost daily between September 2012 and June 2013, moving between the lush enclosure of summer green, through the transient and startling yellows of autumn, to bare open vistas, made fragile and luminous in the low winter sunlight. Duncan Shanks, 2013
Duncan Shanks was born in Airdrie in 1937 and studied at Glasgow School of Art from 1955 to 1960. During his Post Diploma year he was awarded a travelling scholarship which enabled a visit to Italy. On his return to Glasgow he joined the Art School staff where he lectured until 1979, before leaving to concentrate on painting full-time. Duncan’s first solo exhibition was hosted by Stirling University in 1974. Since then he has exhibited worldwide with notable public exhibitions including Falling Water at Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh in 1988, Patterns of Flight at Wrexham Art Centre in 1991 and Poetry of Place at the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery in Glasgow, which coincided with the bequest of the entirety of his sketchbooks to their collection in 2013. Shanks is a member of the Royal Scottish Academy, the Royal Glasgow Institute and Royal Society of Painters in Watercolour. He has been the subject of twelve solo exhibitions at The Scottish Gallery; his most recent, The Riverbank, was the Edinburgh Art Festival exhibition for 2022.
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