Jolomo buys back own £200 painting... for £10k
‘Sentimental’ over 70s work
‘Proud to sell to real people’
IT was painted when he was still making ends meet working as a teacher and sold for just £200.
Now renowned Scottish artist John Lowrie Morrison has told how he paid £10,000 to buy back one of his own early works for its sentimental value.
He shelled out to purchase Archie the Jura, the portrait of a Highland ghillie which was sold at his first official exhibition in 1976.
The show was held at the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Art’s Kelly Gallery when a then unknown Morrison was 28 and working in classrooms.
Morrison, better known as Jolomo, is today one of Scotland’s best-selling artists and his work is collected by celebrities including Madonna, Sting and chef Rick Stein.
But the Glasgow-born artist said he was desperate to retrieve the signature portrait from a collection of works on an elderly gamekeeper who lived near his studio in Tayvallich, Argyll.
In an interview with The Scots Magazine, he revealed: ‘It meant a lot to me, that painting, and I really wanted to buy it back.
‘Archie the Jura was a local character who lived in an old rundown croft a few miles out of Tayvallich village. He was in his nineties and was a former gamekeeper.
‘Nearly the whole exhibition was about Archie and his old croft, which I made drawings and paintings of, as well as of him. It surprised me, as I did not think folk would buy paintings of an old character and his old cottage, but the show of 40 works was a sell-out.’
The hugely successful Morrison also told the magazine he has had a collection of his unseen sketches and paintings valued at £1million by an auction house.
The 69-year-old said the lure of celebrity fans did not drive him and he was just as happy selling his paintings to ‘real people’.
He added: ‘I’m not too bothered with Madonna. I’ve heard she’s definitely bought two paintings but recently heard she also bought six more. She has a curator who gets in all the work she likes.
‘Gregor Fisher is also a big fan, he has a huge pile of them. I’ve met him a few times and he’s a lovely guy. But I am just as proud and happy to sell to real people with ordinary lives, like welders, nurses and teachers. Art can cross a lot of boundaries.’
After graduating from Glasgow School of Art, Morrison worked in education for 25 years, only taking up painting full-time in 1997.
As well as being one of Scotland’s most successful painters, he is probably the most prolific. He has been known to complete as many as four landscapes a day, six days a week.
He said: ‘I’ve always worked really fast. It’s an expressive way of painting. They’re evocative of the mood of a place. If I slow down it doesn’t work.’
Every painting is meticulously researched and he has tens of thousands of photographs of landscapes and hundreds of guidebooks and maps.
He said: ‘I research the history, the folklore, the geology. I study before I paint, and I hope it comes through. I think people unconsciously pick up those vibes.’
He was awarded an OBE in 2011 and in November was presented with the Great London Scot Award for Lifetime Achievement.