Duncan Shanks was born in Airdrie in 1937 and studied at Glasgow School of Art from 1955–1960, later receiving a travelling scholarship which allowed him to visit Italy during his Post Diploma year. Returning to Glasgow, he joined the staff at the School of Art, where he lectured until 1979 before dedicating himself fully to painting.
For more than six decades, Shanks has developed a deeply personal and immersive visual language rooted in the landscape surrounding his home in Crossford, in the Clyde Valley. Working from direct observation, his practice begins outdoors with walking, drawing and recording fleeting moments in nature before these impressions are transformed in the studio into richly layered and expressive paintings. Rivers, wooded glens, storms, hedgerows, moonlight and shifting weather become catalysts for works that balance abstraction and representation with extraordinary energy and sensitivity. Shanks has often described painting as “a journey through a landscape of self”, where memory, movement, poetry and music merge with the experience of the natural world.
The Falls of Clyde, Tinto Hill and the surrounding valley have remained enduring subjects throughout his career. His paintings capture the force and rhythm of nature through sweeping gesture, intricate mark-making and luminous colour, creating works that feel both elemental and intensely lyrical. Whether describing cascading water, storm clouds gathering over hills, or the tangled vitality of winter hedgerows, Shanks conveys landscape as something alive, constantly changing and emotionally charged.
Shanks has exhibited internationally and has been the subject of major public exhibitions including Falling Water at Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh (1988), Patterns of Flight at Wrexham Art Centre (1991), and Poetry of Place at the Hunterian Art Gallery, Glasgow (2013), which coincided with the bequest of his complete sketchbook archive to the Hunterian collection. His work is held in numerous public and private collections across the UK. In December 2026, Duncan Shanks’ work will again be celebrated in a major presentation at the Hunterian Art Gallery, alongside a significant new solo exhibition at The Scottish Gallery.
