We are delighted to present Jonathan Christie’s first solo exhibition with The Scottish Gallery, Sky Sea Land. We first met Christie when he exhibited with St Jude’s as part of our 175th anniversary celebrations in 2017. His was a distinct, compelling phrase in the rich orchestration of the group.
Christie’s paintings are all inspired by real places and objects, but in the memory, reimagined, conflated, obscured and elucidated. His technique is the clear handmaid to the evocation of what he himself describes as, “a personal Genius Loci, that asks us to contemplate and look beneath the surface.”
Deploying watercolour, graphite and sgraffito on a gesso board, he will incise, distress, glaze and wash, but always guided by the powerful impulse of drawing. In this way the paintings emerge from change and development, traces of their genesis apparent at completion.
A ceramic dog is reanimated by the poetic congruity of its appearance in front of the Southwold lighthouse; Orion’s shape is traced onto a moonlit compotier of lemons; a marbled cup lends its pattern to a winding coastal path. These are the charms of Christie’s vision, at once incisive and delicate, the working of imagination on memory.
