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James Cumming lived for more than a year in the remote island community of Callanish on the Isle of Lewis after being awarded a travel scholarship from the college in 1950. His residency lead to his acclaimed series of Hebridean paintings and much of his work shows inspiration from life on the island and the distinctive landscape of Lewis. As well as his Hebridean figurative work, he is noted for his still life compositions which are freely balanced between abstraction and figuration. In the 1960s he started to examine more geometrical and purer abstract themes and many of his later works derive from investigations into the Electron Microscope and his interest in microbiology and cellular structures as is apparent in this painting.
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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