The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
New exhibition comes to Fife
Echoing the style of his famous painting Poets’ Pub, Alexander Moffat’s Scotland’s Voices depicts Scotland’s traditional singers and musicians. The touring exhibition has now reached St Andrews.
Just shy of a year since Beth Junor opened The Junor Gallery in St Andrews, she is thrilled to be hosting the next stage in a touring exhibition focusing on Alexander Moffat’s largescale painting Scotland’s Voices.
Since the beginning of the year, the exhibition has visited Lillie Art Gallery in Milngavie and Montrose Museum. The show also includes Moffat’s preliminary sketches as well as Ruth Nicol’s celebrated Scottish landscapes, along with the words of Scottish poet Alan Riach.
Gallery director Beth Junor says: “It’s an honour and a privilege to have this exhibition here in St Andrews in my gallery. It’s very special for St Andrews and for Fife.
“Alan Riach contacted me and asked: ‘Would it be alright if we came to your wee gallery in St Andrews after Montrose?’ It was more than all right! It was very typically modest of the three of them.”
Alexander Moffat – who was born in Dunfermline and raised in West Wemyss and Lumphinnans – is well known for his work Poets’ Pub (1980) which is now owned by the National Galleries of Scotland.
The famous work depicts an imaginary vision of the major Scottish poets and writers of the second half of the 20th Century gathered around the central figure of Hugh MacDiarmid, including: Norman MacCaig, Sorley MacLean, George Mackay Brown and Edwin Morgan.
Moffat was elected to the Royal Scottish Academy in 2004 and was awarded an OBE for services to the arts in 2006.
Beth goes on: “Poets’ Pub was looking at the literary life of Scotland in 1980 and
Scotland’s Voices is looking at the life of traditional music and song in Scotland.”
She says the painting shows the country’s traditional music culture being passed from generation to generation: “It’s this historical continuity between past generations to this generation. There’s a little girl playing the penny whistle and she represents the future.”
The singers and musicians depicted are Willie Scott, Jean Redpath, Aly Bain, Belle Stewart, Jimmy MacBeath, Hamish Henderson (central figure, recording), Dolina MacLennan, Allan MacDonald and Jeannie Robertson.
While Scotland’s Voices retains some of the gentle, dreamlike quality of companion work Poets’ Pub, it also reflects significant differences in Moffat’s use of colour, content and composition.
Having travelled extensively – including visiting Mexico twice, where he saw the artworks and vividly painted houses of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera as well as the work of Rivera’s fellow muralists Orozco and Siqueiros – Moffat has brought new inspirations to this work.
Many of his preliminary drawings were done in pastel and thanks to his significant skill and experience he has transferred these soft tones to oil in the final painting.
Ruth Nicol’s Scottish landscapes, meanwhile, are not timeless, idealised, romanticised views of Scotland populated by highland cows and heather. Instead Nicol incorporates into her works signs of how the land has been shaped by its people – from Scottish industry past and present to the country’s distinctive architecture.
Alan Riach is professor of Scottish Literature at Glasgow University, an internationally renowned academic on the work and life of Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid and advocate for the study and appreciation of Scottish literature worldwide.
General admission to the exhibition is free, however tomorrow’s exhibition tour at 2pm is £3 on the door/donation to the gallery.
Landmarks is at The Junor Gallery in South Street, St Andrews until November 30.
junorgallery.scot
It’s this historical continuity between past generations to this generation