| Description
| Oil painting on canvas, consisting of 4 panels framed by thin wood battens, stored separately. With wood shelf to sit on for display. Style is abstracted, subject is Crossford village. The artist Duncan Shanks lived at Crossford in the Clyde Valley for almost twenty years.
In a letter to the Museum the artist writes:
"I have always enjoyed nature and walking and clilmbing. I always take a sketch book and draw on my expeditions and it followed that landscape became my main pre-occupation. Landscape painting is a solitary activity and it suited my nature.
Working outside in Scotland in all weathers one is constantly aware of change and movement and this is what I have always tried to express, and living on the banks of the Clyde at Crossford, water has been a recurring theme in my work [...]
Early influences were Cezanne, Soutine and Bonnard, but in the seventies, exhibitions in London of the American Abstract Expressionists, especially the Dutch-American de Kooning excited me. The freedom with which de Kooning used the medium seemed to extend Glasgow's traditionally painterly approach and working on a larger scale seemed to open up new possibilities for me, allowing a freer more gestural approach. Closer to home, as a student, I admired Joan Eardley's life style and dedication to her art, and as one of David Donaldson's staff I was naturally influenced by such an enthusiastic individual."
In his own work, Shanks uses colour directly, to capture the changing appearance of the landscape. He also uses oil paints, acrylics and paper collages and enjoys exploring new techniques of working.
Shanks has also worked in many different scales and he likes painting on a larger scale as it allows him to use a freer, more gestural approach when he is applying paint.
In Crossford, Shanks uses natural, realistic colours and this particular image is recognisable as a landscape painting. He works very quickly and you can see where he has splashed the paint onto the canvas. He has also collaged painted pieces of paper into this work, which you can see if you look closely. |
