James Morrison has exhibited with The Scottish Gallery since the fifties and has been represented here exclusively since 1989. His previous show, Decades, which began our 175th anniversary year in 2017, showcased paintings from the seventy years of his painting life. In From Angus to the Arctic, his twenty-fifth show with us, we are delighted to include his most recent work, made around his studio south of Montrose. The show is also a retrospective of the subject of Angus. Morrison first came to Catterline in 1960, a move partly inspired by the presence of Joan Eardley and the beginning of a lifelong love of the varied landscape of The Mearns.
A selection from his three Arctic expeditions, created between 1990 and 1996, is hung alongside as a counterpoint: one group reveals a changing, vulnerable landscape of ice and water; the other, something far more ancient, but carrying the history of man in its fields, hedgerows and hamlets. Morrison’s painting is beyond representation and remains relevant to whichever sky under which he has worked.
