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framed dimensions: 84.5 x 104.5 cm
signed lower centre
James Cumming won a travelling scholarship in the late 1940s. Rather than following his peers to continental Europe, he chose to journey to the western edge of the Isle of Lewis, which became his home for the next two years. His accommodation was rudimentary: mice shared his living and studio space, and rain pooled on the floor beneath his bed frame. Cumming was based in Callanish, close to the famous circle of ancient standing stones. The landscape’s timeless quality, steeped in myth and legend, was a constant presence, infusing his paintings with rich layers of narrative. His years on Lewis were formative, inspiring a series of paintings which were developed over nearly two decades. Studio Table at Midnight, which remained in the artist’s family collection, is a significant painting from his Lewis period. It references the humble croft he called home, reducing pictorial elements into abstract forms of colour and varying surface texture. It evokes the raw experience of island life: the elemental forces of nature, the isolation, and above all, the ever-encroaching dark that filled his imagination. He once recounted some of his experiences to a Scottish journalist:
I went to an island I’d never seen, and a people I’d never known. It seemed to offer unending material and a challenge to translate into paint the character of the Lewis islanders living and working in a land of gneiss rock, flat, wind-exposed, desolate… I had visions of curtains opened at 4:30 to let in the cold early-morning sunlight, the gun and last night’s bouquet of field flowers lying on kitchen table…
James Cumming
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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