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framed dimensions: 65 x 65 cm
signed lower left
A strong case can be made for John Houston being the greatest expressionist painter Scotland has ever produced. His tireless work ethic, control of technique, on the edge, and sense of the emotional power of colour, exercised over sixty years is an unparalleled contribution. His native Fife was a constant wellspring. It is there on the horizon in much of his work created in East Lothian, and he returned to the landscapes he had walked as a boy throughout his life. The summer fields, hedgerows, birds often rising; the fall of land towards the estuary; the skies lava hot at sunset, but ever changing. This is in his mind’s eye, his passionate place. His colour is never crude and is based in experience but is pushed, like in the work of the Germans he admired: Nolde and Kirchner. Houston worked in all scales, which was a significant professional attribute, each scale of picture giving different challenges. Sometimes there is a struggle towards resolution, his impasto worked over. Other times a painting might be finished in one creative frenzy, and may be left. Sunset Kilconquhar seems one such, so that the moment near sunset is made permanent, each mark telling, each choice of a colour a note in the crescendo delivering a strong emotional punch.
John Houston was brought up in Buckhaven in Fife, where the ever-changing light over the Forth estuary and fields falling away to the shoreline were the backdrop to an idyllic childhood of horse fairs, golf and football. The landscape eventually inspired him to become a painter. Houston was drawn into the fold of Edinburgh College of Art and became as prodigious and natural a painter as his mentor William Gillies. He travelled widely, making exhibitions after trips to Europe, Japan and America, always with his fellow artist, wife and soul-mate Elizabeth Blackadder. He was an expressionist who could evoke the subtle, particular character of place, but his vision and ambition always looked outward. John Houston was represented by The Scottish Gallery from the late 1950s. He was ten times a solo exhibitor at The Edinburgh International Festival, between 1961 and his last show in 2008. Houston was honoured with a major retrospective at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in 2005. His work is held in numerous public collections. We are actively looking for artwork by John Houston. If you have any works you are interested in selling please contact The Gallery.
The Scottish Gallery exhibitions: 1960, 1962 (Festival), 1965, 1967 (Festival), 1971 (Festival), 1975, 1980, 1990, 1993, 1997, 2003 (Festival), 2007 (Festival), 2009 (Memorial), 2012, 2013
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