I have found this second inspiration piece to be a real challenge. My friend Elisabeth chose this quirky and challenging painting by Scottish artist Gerard Burns. I didn’t know anything about Burns, but have since learned that one of his paintings hangs in the First Ministers office in Holyrood. (Scottish Government). When I look through Burn’s work, I am struck by how realistic his brushwork is. His paintings are disturbingly real, causing you to check whether there is a photographic element to them. That’s not the only disturbing thing, he mixes a sense of the fantastic and dramatic with people who you feel familiar with. A child, who looks ordinary, familiar, stands with two enormous wolves in one, in another a girl walks in a familiar, perhaps Glaswegian post-industrial landscape with a menagerie of creatures, including two doves accompanying her. I find his work brilliant and challenging, mixing the ordinary with the dramatic and the wonderful; as though he challenges us to see the same in what’s around us.

He isn’t beyond some humorous and wry comment either. The piece that Elisabeth chose seems an amusing metaphor for me, and in a time of such instability and fear in the financial and economic world, this seems an appropriate painting. For me the businessman is reeling backwards under the inexorable pressure of the money swirling around him, doing what money does, oblivious to his attempts to control the environment. It could depict the moment he realises that he isn’t in control. For those who are interested in chaos theory, markets may exhibit chaotic behaviours when the predictable and smooth patterns of economic transactions suddenly break down and become an unpredictable storm. In other words, it may be impossible to ever truly be in control of economies!

Gerard Burn’s website. The galleries are fantastic.

My response:

The almost photorealistic quality made me wonder whether I could try something similar, although the sheer quantity of cash swirling around meant that I couldn’t envisage technically (or financially) how I could reproduce it. I settled on a more modest collage in which I photographed a “businessman” my ever obliging friend Martin, reeling under the onslaught in his battle with the financial flow. The bananas are just my way of making clear it’s a joke and a metaphor; the man is in a fight without any useful tools. Does he himself understand this?  I photographed the falling money separately but on the same background using flash and the highest shutter sync speed available, 1/250th on the 40D. I have recorded here before how little I love using photoshop, but using the layers functions, I built up the “cash flow” over Martin, trying to get a sense of the notes flying towards and around him. One of the reasons for starting this new “26 artists” project is to learn, here I have learned about a brilliant artist, and as a bonus I have moved out of my comfort zone a little with photoshop and developed those skills a little. I hope you like the result, which I have titled “Cash Flow” in homage to Burn’s own shocking pun title of “Prophet and Loss”:

And so to C. Watch this space.

John Miller Gray, 1850 – 1894. Art critic and first curator of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery1885

Born in Edinburgh Scotland in 1854, Patrick William Adam once said that he “was inspired to paint by the lush emerald landscapes of his homeland. The son of a well-known lawyer, Patrick chose a career in the arts rather than follow in his father’s footsteps. Accepted to the Royal Scottish Academy, he mastered his technique under the tutorial of G.P. Chalmers and W. McTaggart.

Originally, he began honing his craft as a portraitist before specializing in landscape painting. He is best known for his genre painting of interior scenes, created with his light and airy brushwork in an impressionist style. He exhibited his works, which were well received at the Royal Scottish Academy, as well as the Royal Academy, and won the acclaimed Maclaine Watters medal in 1878. Patrick Adam died in North Berwick in 1929. (From Global Art Gallery: www.globalgallery.com)

My response:

This portrait doesn’t seem typical of the paintings that I have found online by Patrick William Adam. The pictures that seem to have endured are the rather “mannered” and impersonal paintings of Edinburgh breakfast rooms with light flooding in to their people-free spaces. This one that Gerry has chosen has the subject essentially not interacting with Adam at all. The portrait is intimate mainly because the view it offers us of John Gray has some of his personal possessions around him and is relaxing by reading, again indicating that we are voyeurs here. The paintings in the background tell the story of Gray’s profession, but his face, tells us little.

I thought immediately of our local picture framer and artist, William Masson. William kindly agreed to sit for this portrait in which he has some personal posessions and the tools of his trade around him, telling his story for him. William is reading his book and, critically, not engaging with me. I tried to keep the picture totally impersonal, but looking at the scene through the viewfinder, I softened the scene a little by asking William to look up from his book to allow us to see a little more of his face, perhaps that’s a little of my portraitist’s desire to explore faces asserting itself. The picture was enjoyable to do, and I certainly feel I explored a different style of portrait.

“William Masson”

OK, so what’s all this about? Since my “100 Portraits” project I haven’t been stretching myself as much as I would like to, and while I am still regularly taking photographs I feel that I need something to make me learn some new approaches. I have always wanted to try to learn more about some interesting artists and try to take some inspiration or even provocation from their work into my photography.

I have asked a small group of friends to select a single painting by an artist that they don’t know anything about. The twist is that I want to work my way around the alphabet from A to Z! My friend Gerry, who discussed the idea with me originally, has given my my first challenge; the picture you see above. Not only will I learn about an artist, but hopefully the friend making the choice will also enjoy learning about the artist’s work.

Watch this space for B!