Four artists feature at the Union Gallery this month, in an exhibition titled Poetic Licence.
Taking pride of place is the Cromarty Series by James Newton Adams: a collection of childlike acrylics detailing life in and around the Cromarty Firth on Scotland's north-east coast, most created in direct response to short poems by the writer Iain Finlay Macleod.
Adams describes himself as having been influenced by Expressionism and the British Folk and Naïve traditions of the early and mid-20th century. But 'as a trained artist,' he says, the 'challenge I face is to "unlearn" and let go of the constraints while benefiting from the technical control that a formal training brings'.
Letting go is key to his work in this exhibition – not just in terms of technique (he strives for the unselfconscious spontaneity of childish art) but in attitude. He seeks in pieces like 'The Boat in the Window' (above) the generous, non-judgemental curiosity of infancy as he recalls coastal communities negotiating life at the boundary of land and sea.
He generally views these scenes from above, and depicts them with the enthusiastic eye of youth which figures important things as larger and brighter and unconstrained by formal rules of composition or perspective. His attention is drawn to minor dramas in wider scenes, private moments, personal struggles, the intimate exchanges between people and creatures.
Adams's are not idealised or sentimental impressions, however. His seas look cold and ill-tempered, the tankers and rig support vessels with their 'Fearsome Engines' (below) are threatening as well as fascinating. The weather is often foul. The horses in the field are strangely elongated, Pictish spirits. The villages look sooty, stooped, indrawn.
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Yet in spite of such hardships, perhaps in reaction, a quirky, humorous spirit of resistance is evident in the human figures struggling to control boats, dogs, unexpectedly large or unidentifiable fish, and to survive the constant buffeting of winds.
The colours used are largely muted shades – greys, blacks, blues and olives – with the occasional splash of red. But far from being depressing, this choice gives these works a satisfying modesty and economy, and binds one to the other when seen together in numbers. Again, form and message combine: the paintings are a visual echo of the small communities they describe.
The inspiration for Adams's works are the words of Lewis-based writer Iain Finlay Macleod, originally written during his period as Gaelic Writer in Residence at the Cromarty Arts Trust in 2011 (see file attached at the foot of this page). Perhaps because they do not translate exactly into English, a few of these I found unclear, unsatisfying. Others, though, I loved for their nicely observed, bitter-sweet humanity. My favourite combination of poem and painting was this ambivalently titled gem.
PASSING THE SUTOR
I come here every day
I love it
when my jumper matches the
boat.
Today red. A little jackpot.
I'll maybe see her
our dogs are quite friendly now
and last time she laughed.
If only
I would just say it.
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Poetry-themed works by the renowned Joyce Gunn Cairns dominate the far wall of the gallery space, and dwell with characteristic honesty on tension between physical form and inner mental or spiritual composition.
'Shakespeare's Sonnet' (below) portrays two men in quiet communion, and is energised by the tender placing of one's hands upon the legs of the other. Scrawled in pencil at the heart of the work are the words: 'Let me not to the marriage of true minds / Admit impediments. Love is not love / Which alters when it alteration finds'.
It would seem, then, a touching but straightforward confirmation of tolerance within love, and an affirmation of tolerance for gay love in general. But the following line of Sonnet 116 – 'Or bends with the remover to remove' – haunts the work with a suggestion of infidelity and hence fragility in the apparently stable relationship shown here.
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I was less interested in Cairns's 'Tribute to Sylvia Plath', depicting a naked woman (perhaps the poetess?) attacked by crows (perhaps Ted Hughes's familiars or men in general). I could admire it as a a skilful drawing, and react strongly to its communication of violence and vulnerability, but it didn't say anything new to me about the real Sylvia Plath or her beatification by feminists.
I much preferred the ethereal purples and blues and lilacs of 'The Poet'. Hand held to the temple, eyes dreamily unfocused, cup of tea in one hand and a tawny owl perched on the chair adjacent, the figure shown is a strangely domestic and otherworldly Athena rooted in our present.
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I am always intrigued by the mixed-media hints and revelations of Imogen Alabaster. Her candid allusions to personal relationships and memories are usually too coded for this viewer to unravel, but the painterly language in which she clothes them is endlessly fascinating.
Of her works showing here at the moment, my favourites are 'We'll Be Together' – another extraordinary study of water, its submarine depth and chill and texture, and the imagined lives of those who inhabit it – and the beautifully absorbing 'More than Enough for Me to Share' (below). Both titles are drawn from song lyrics, the first being Bob Marley's 'Is This Love', the second from Bowie and Gabrels's 'If There Is Something'.
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Olivia Irvine's works shown in the Union over the last two years have mostly been on a far more modest scale than those exhibited now. The full, eye-watering joyousness of her colours greets the visitor on entry, and acts as a kind of visual tonic for the whole room.
In these oil and egg tempera works, she is on familiar territory, recalling and reanimating remembered places and pastimes and sensations of childhood.
Gallery partner Alison Auldjo is interesting on the topic of Irvine's apparent sunniness, and says that closer looks are frequently repaid with slightly sinister details and unsettling suggestions. Take 'Burying Treasure' (below), for example, which on the surface appears quite straightforward: a game, a bay, a combination of hills and rocks that for a few hours comprise the child's whole world. And then step back for a moment, and the darker of the two hills has sprouted eyes.
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'Landed Object' (foot of the page) was my favourite Irvine on display, and is alluded to in the artist's enchanting poem which follows.
SOME OF THESE THINGS
Imagine some of these things
Not just the glint of a hard, blue glacier
Nor the curl of wrought iron on a bench by the Seine
Not even the haunting music from a pink house,
Chanced upon on a midnight walk
But old, blotched walls
A carpet, faded and worn
A diving platform, a broken parasol, a creaky hinge
And a heart drawn hastily on a greasy window
Imagine and be there
Where the bright leaves dance in the tangled dell
And the rose trellises carve out spaces in the sky
Stay a while and touch the smooth, orange beacons
Left by lopped off branches on the crumbly trunks
Open the cupboard where the imaginary thing lives
Hit that soaring, plastic shuttlecock
Maybe you once had the shell I put in my pocket for a while
Sat on that same lonely, stony shore
And swung on that same peeling gate
Even so
I want to show you the actual tent poles and the signposts
The spotted dresses, the lampposts, the trodden path
I want you to see for yourself
The exact spot we hid the treasure
Feel for yourself the curl of the fine chain on your hand
The drag of a bag on the floor
The soft folds of that curtain drawn aside
Hear the ringing ankle bells
The buffeting whip of a kite
And the crisp turning of another page
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Poetic Licence runs at the Union Gallery (45 Broughton Street) until 27 February.