James Morrison exhibited with The Scottish Gallery from the late 1950s and was represented by The Gallery exclusively from 1987. His relationship with The Gallery and its’ succession of Directors and colleagues, was one of mutual respect and friendship, his twenty-six solo exhibitions waypoints on his journey as a painter. He thought of himself as a landscape artist, happy to argue for the relevance of his chosen subject in an atomised art world. But his subject was far from narrow nor his approach predictable. He painted in The Alps, Saskatoon, Botswana, Greece, The Pyrenees and made three painting expeditions to the High Arctic.
Under a Northern Sky contains a remarkable collection of Morrison’s Scottish subjects, many drawn from private collections. His connection with his subject was founded on a deep appreciation and knowledge of the natural world. The change of the seasons and the working of the land all fed into the process of choosing a scene to paint. His paintings, which he would date on the day of their making, were representational records of the landscape, but also distillations of his lived experience within the landscape and by extension our own.
