 |
Ken Currie | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1960 (age 64–65) |
| Nationality | Scottish |
| Education | Glasgow School of Art |
| Known for | Painting, Printmaking |
| Notable work | Three Oncologists, Portrait of Peter Higgs, Chimera |
Ken Currie (born 1960 in North Shields, North Tyneside, England) is a Scottish painter working out of Glasgow. His paintings have been described as dark and violent. [2] [3]
Currie grew up in Barrhead. [3] He started studying at the Glasgow School of Art in 1978 and graduated in 1983. [4] In the late 1980s he was gaining attention as part of the "New Glasgow Boys", a group of young Scottish figurative painters, containing among others Peter Howson, Adrian Wiszniewski and Steven Campbell. [3]
Throughout the 1980s, Currie's work depicted heroic workers and revolutionary union representatives as part of a bigger "socialist Clydeside". This is seen as a response to the policies of then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. [5] Currie was involved with the Communist Party and describes his political views at the time as those of a "typical Scottish leftist". [6]
In 1987 Carrie finished an eight-piece series of large-scale paintings of the massacre of the Calton weavers of 1787, which was the violent suppression of a strike by the British Army, resulting in " Scotland's first working-class martyrs". [7] The paintings which were commissioned for the 200th anniversary of the massacre are now hanging on the ceiling of the People’s Palace in Glasgow. [4] [8]
Starting with the early 1990s Currie began to be emotionally affected by the political and humanitarian crises in Eastern Europe, such as the Yugoslav Wars. [2] He incorporated this in his art by depicting decaying and damaged bodies. [1]
While a lot of his portraits are loosely based on his own face Currie has also been painting portraits of living people, such as the three doctors working at the Ninewells Hospital in Dundee who were the models for Three Oncologists in 2002, one of his most well-known paintings, a commission of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. [3] [5] [2] In 2005 Currie was commissioned by the University of Edinburgh to paint a portraiture of theoretical physicist Peter Higgs. [4]
In 2011 Currie unveiled Immortality, a body of work consisting of paintings of the wealthy and famous. The title is an ironic nod at their inability to cheat death. [3]
In 2019 he revealed Unkown Man, a large-scale portrait of forensic anthropologist Dame Sue Black. [9] The portrait is on long-term loan to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery and is displayed publicly. The idea for the portrait came to fruition when Currie and Professor Black crossed paths during a BBC Radio 4 programme, The Anatomy Lesson, which featured discussion around the relationship between art and anatomy. [9] Following on from this meeting, Currie was invited to Professor Black's workplace at the University of Dundee, where she gave him a tour of the dissection room. The artist was so moved by what he witnessed and encountered, he later asked Professor Black to sit for a portrait. [9]
In 2023 Currie shared his studio journals with long-time collaborator and art historian Tom Normand. Normand compiled and edited the content of said journals, which resulted in Ken Currie: Paintings and Writings. [10]
Currie's paintings show a profound interest in the body (physical and metaphorical) and deeply explores the theme of mortality, which he called a "terror" later in his life. [3] In a 2021 interview with Tatler Asia Currie says he wants his work "to hover in that [liminal zone] between beauty and horror". [2]
A lot of Currie's work features subjects in front of inky, dark backgrounds. This stylistic element has developed while he was studying surgeons and experienced the darkness and spotlight of an operating theater. Currie himself says he wants to depict "something emerging out of darkness" and admits that it has a "theatrical element" to it. [2]
In a 2013 interview figurative painter Francis Bacon is named as Currie's "idol". In the same interview he says he "worships" 17th century Spanish painter Diego Velázquez. [3]
Exhibition Catalogs
Monographs
Peter Howson OBE is a Scottish painter. He was a British official war artist in 1993 during the Bosnian War.
Dame Elizabeth Violet Blackadder, Mrs Houston, was a Scottish painter and printmaker. She was the first woman to be elected to both the Royal Scottish Academy and the Royal Academy of Arts.
Alison Watt OBE FRSE RSA is a British painter who first came to national attention while still at college when she won the 1987 Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery in London.
Steven Campbell (1953–2007) was a painter from Scotland.
Timothy Hyman was a British figurative painter, art writer and curator. He published monographs on both Sienese Painting and on Pierre Bonnard, as well as most recently The World New Made: Figurative Painting in the Twentieth Century. He wrote extensively on art and film, was a regular contributor to The Times Literary Supplement (TLS) and curated exhibitions at the Tate, Institute of Contemporary Arts and Hayward galleries. Hyman was a portraitist but is best known for his narrative renditions of London. Drawing inspiration from artists such as Max Beckmann and Bonnard, as well as Lorenzetti and Brueghel, he explored his personal relationship, both real and mythological, with the city where he lived and worked. He employed vivid colours, shifting scale and perspectives, to create visionary works. He was elected an RA in 2011.
Tony Bevan is a British painter, known for his psychologically charged images of people at the edge of respectable society.
Alexander Goudie was a Scottish figurative painter.
Portrait painting in Scotland includes all forms of painted portraiture in Scotland, from its beginnings in the early sixteenth century until the present day. The origins of the tradition of portrait painting in Scotland are in the Renaissance, particularly through contacts with the Netherlands. The first portrait of a named person that survives is that of Archbishop William Elphinstone, probably painted by a Scottish artist using Flemish techniques around 1505. Around the same period Scottish monarchs turned to the recording of royal likenesses in panel portraits, painted in oils on wood. The tradition of royal portrait painting in Scotland was probably disrupted by the minorities and regencies it underwent for much of the sixteenth century. It began to flourish after the Reformation, with paintings of royal figures and nobles by Netherlands artists Hans Eworth, Arnold Bronckorst and Adrian Vanson. A specific type of Scottish picture from this era was the "vendetta portrait", designed to keep alive the memory of an atrocity. The Union of Crowns in 1603 removed a major source of artistic patronage in Scotland as James VI and his court moved to London. The result has been seen as a shift "from crown to castle", as the nobility and local lairds became the major sources of patronage.
Carl Randall is a British figurative painter, whose work is based on images of modern Japan and London.
The Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize is an annual art award, intended to encourage creative representational painting and draughtsmanship. It gives out prizes totalling £25,000. The prize originated in London in 2005, with a collaboration between the Worshipful Company of Painter-Stainers and the Lynn Foundation. The final exhibition has been held at the Mall Galleries, London, since 2012.
Victoria Elizabeth Crowe is a Scottish artist known for her portrait and landscape paintings. She has works in several collections including the National Galleries of Scotland, the National Portrait Gallery, London, and the Royal Scottish Academy.
Alexander Ignatius Roche RSA NEAC RP was a Scottish artist in the late 19th century and an important figure in the "Glasgow Boys".
Robert Sivell (1888–1958) was a Scottish portrait artist active in the first half of the 20th century. He was a founder member of the Glasgow Society of Artists and Sculptors in 1919.
Scotland played a major role in the technical development of photography in the nineteenth century through the efforts of figures including James Clerk Maxwell and David Brewster. Its artistic development was pioneered by Robert Adamson and artist David Octavius Hill, whose work is considered to be some of the first and finest artistic uses of photography. Thomas Roger was one of the first commercial photographers. Thomas Keith was one of the first architectural photographers. George Washington Wilson pioneered instant photography and landscape photography. Clementina Hawarden and Mary Jane Matherson were amongst the first female photographers. War photography was pioneered by James MacCosh, James Robertson, Alexander Graham and Mairi Chisholm.
Ronald Forbes RSA, RGI is an artist who is primarily a painter but who has also made films throughout his career. He is an academician of the Royal Scottish Academy, was elected a Professional Member of the Society of Scottish Artists in 1971 and a member of the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts in 2013.
Ray Richardson is a British painter. He lives and works in London.
Alexander Moffat OBE RSA known as Sandy Moffat, is a Scottish painter, author and teacher.
Adrian Wiszniewski is a Scottish artist and one of the members of the New Glasgow Boys a group of artists who emerged from Glasgow School of Art and led the resurgence of Scottish figurative painting in the late 20th century. Other members of this group included the late Steven Campbell, who was a close friend of Adrian, Peter Howson and Ken Currie. Under the tutelage of artists like Alexander Moffat in the 1980s the four later went on the attain national and international status.
Gerard M. Burns is a Scottish painter and musician. One of Scotland’s best known portrait artists, Burns has been heralded as one of the country’s leading artists of the human condition, playing a pivotal role in promoting the genre.
Alan Fletcher was a Scottish artist. He has been described as "one of the most exciting young artists of his generation".
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Artists | |
| Other | |
