New Marine Images from Paul Kennedy

Paul Kennedy has been moving on from recent figurative work and last summer spent time revisiting some childhood haunts by the sea. He found a mixed scene with some of the scenes from childhood only memories and replaced by images and colours from a new more industrial age, which present interesting new challenges to the artist. Some things of course remain the same - a fisherman’s weathered face and the old lighthouse at Crinan, while the old world quietly fades away.

Paul can be contacted on paulkennedyart@googlemail.com.

St Abbs Returned

 

Eight years after leaving Edinburgh College of Art Paul Kennedy is now well established in his studio in Glasgow's Merchant City. To date much of his work has been inspired by the city, depicting a narrative between the people and their surroundings. 

 

 

For the new work in his latest exhibition Paul has revisited St Abbs, a favourite holiday haunt of his family for generations, not only on trips finding new images but remembering those from his own childhood and also reconstructing and imagining a few scenes from the past caught in his Grandparents old black and white snapshots.

 

A recent change of emphasis from mainly figurative work to expressive painting has given him greater freedom to explore his use of colour. The old images being black and white allow him an unconstrained palette.

'Everything has its own story. I like the idea of bringing history into my painting in more ways than one. For me this exhibition is the start of a new direction, a discovery of something that has always been there and just brought to light not too unlike finding my Grans photo album'.

The exhibition is now on at the Billcliffe Gallery in Glasgow city centre. Paul can be contacted via facebook and his website is  www.paulkennedyart.com.

 

 

 

The smallest Gallery in the World, a very small Island and an Abundance of Progue

Today Easdale Island with its strange scenery and lovely wee cottages is a haven for artists and craftspeople and it's where the enterprising picture-framer Jan Fraser has just opened The Bothy, which may qualify for the title of the smallest art gallery in the world. Nephews Paul and Adam were among various well-known artists represented at the first show.

One of Adam's ship pictures has pride of place

The Editor and the Brother in 1954

Thomas the Lifeguard, serene in his perch

 Prints of the above and many more are available from The Bothy.

Easdale is so tiny that Hamish Haswell-Smith doesn't really rate it as an island, describing it in his book as a "broken-off outlier" from Seil, which in turn he doesn't see as a proper island, since the old ferry at the Tigh-an Truish inn was replaced by a bridge 220 years ago. As everyone probably knows already the inn got its name, which translates as "The House of the Trousers", because after the second Jacobite rising wearing the kilt became illegal, so islanders would stop there to borrow a pair of trousers for their visit to the mainland.

Easdale is smaller today than it was originally, as for several centuries it was populated by squads of diligent miners who blasted and chopped huge holes, hundreds of feet deep, bringing out millions of tons of slate that at one time roofed the World. 

 

 At its peak there were about five hundred residents on Easdale alone, with many more on the neighbouring islands. It's hard to imagine what life must have been like in these places, particularly on tiny outcrops like Belnahua, where bad weather could cut the workers off for months in winter. They lived in  slate cottages built by themselves and grew their own vegetables in miniature walled gardens, the very earth created by the workers by harvesting seaweed, bracken and dung, identifiable today from the lush weeds that flourish on what's left.

In such a slatey, tree-less environment it must have been seen as a gift from the gods when the sailing ship Norval, laden with a cargo of Canadian timber struck rocks on nearby uninhabited Insch Island in thick fog on the shortest day, 20 December 1870. A few weeks earlier she had left Montreal bound for Glasgow and would have been heading for the Mull of Kintyre, about thirty miles South of where she struck. Captain Taylor would have known from soundings and the fog that he was near land and may have been trying to give Ireland a wide berth. The entire crew got safely off and rowed the short distance to Easdale. Two days later the owner, Walter Grieve of Greenock, sent the steam tug Flying Meteor to attempt a rescue, but the Norval was found to be badly holed on a rock and on 5 January 1871 she broke up.

I've written before about the ancient art of The Progue. We can assume that the Lorn proguers were out in force as thousands of deal boards floated North past Oban and into the Sound of Mull, while Grieve's men tried to salvage as much as they could. By February the Glasgow Herald was carrying advertisements for the contract to transport the salvage to Glasgow for auction.

Walter Grieve was one of a family of diligent Scots, from Perthshire originally, who established themselves around 1837 in the cod fishery in St Johns, Newfoundland, then moved from 1855 into sealing and whaling. He commissioned numerous ships, the Norval being a large three-master being built by A McMillan & Sons at Dumbarton, on the site latterly occupied by the distillery, in 1864. His brother James Johnston Grieve was the resident partner at Greenock. He was prominent in promoting the development of the harbour and various public works in the town, was Provost four times and represented the town in Parliament from 1868 to 1877. In common with most incomers he found that his efforts weren't entirely welcomed in some quarters, but the effects remain and Grieve Road is named after him.

These mid-Victorian Scots were an astonishingly resilient, enterprising tribe of risk-takers as one can see from Walter Grieve's quick response to the wreck. Later his family suffered a financial ship-wreck as the records show that they were all sequestrated at Greenock Sheriff Court in 1895. Incredibly for the times they clawed their way out of bankruptcy in little over two years.

Back to our story, on Easdale the islanders seized the chance to acquire the main mast of the Norval, together with sufficient timber to construct a new hall for the training of the local militia. For the same purpose part of the old harbour was filled in with quarry waste to create a level drill field, the present-day village green.  .

Ten years after the wreck a storm burst through the thin curtain walls and the quarries flooded, drowning the machinery. The men survived but their livelihood was largely gone. Industry limped on with slate being chopped out of the accessible areas until the 1950s. By 1961 the population was down to 16, but it has gradually recovered and today stands at about 60, with many of the cottages also in use as holiday homes. The story can be found on www.easdale.org.

Today visiting Easdale, accessed by a two minute ride on a little ferry crewed by a three-legged dog, is a unique experience. Apart from the artists the island now has its own local history museum, the Puffer pub and restaurant and numerous curious relics of our industrial past. The old proguing habit survives too, as the recycled telephone box shows.

Coney Island Life-guard

Paul Kennedy has just started on a series of work inspired by his visit to the States earlier this year. We don't really have chaps like this on the shores around here, he would need a big woolly jumper and a Sou'wester, but it's nice to dream of warmer places.

Paul tells me the lifeguard is off to London to one of the galleries, but there will doubtless be more like him to follow. Although this is a slightly new, more international direction for him the work reflects some of the concepts and colours he has been working through in recent work. I've added a few examples below and more can be seen on http://www.paulkennedyart.com

 

The Kennedy Brothers @ Glasgow Art Club

Govan Shipyard by Adam Kennedy

This July, Glasgow Art Club is hosting the first joint exhibition of two young Glasgow-born artists, the Kennedy brothers, Adam and Paul. The famous club, where the original Glasgow Boys worked and played, is now attracting a new generation of young artists, such as the Kennedy brothers.

Older brother Paul (29) was a finalist in the 2010 Aspect Prize and is now well established on the Scottish art scene with many solo shows and various awards from the Royal Glasgow Institute and others. Adam (23) won the Aspect prize this year and this exhibition will help to make his work better known.

Both brothers are graduates of Edinburgh College of Art but remain firmly rooted in Glasgow. They have been strongly influenced by the city and the River Clyde and its surroundings, living in the west end and working from studios in the east end. Against this shared background they have evolved distinctive styles, Paul's work being mainly in oils while Adam's work shows the influence of time spent at Kyoto University in Japan, learning about the composition and use of different mediums. In their separate ways they strive to recapture memories and feelings of lost places, structures and lifestyles and to commemorate the people and the heavy industries whose histories continue to shape our lives.

This exhibition gives viewers the chance to enjoy the work of these talented artist brothers and to see the development of their distinctive styles in a wonderful historic location that is one of Glasgow's best-kept secrets.

The Kennedy Brothers
Glasgow Art Club
185 Bath Street
Glasgow G2 4HU
0141 248 5210
www.glasgowartclub.org
www.paulkennedyart.com
www.adamkennedyart.com
Exhibition open daily, apart from Tuesdays and Sundays, from 9 to 30 July 2011, 11.00am to 5.00pm

Riverside Boy by Paul Kennedy

The Kennedy Brothers

The magic spinner

Over the next few months you can view images of your editor and his brother in Glasgow's St Vincent Street as part of one of the Braewell Galleries' celebrated public art projects.

It's a little disconcerting to find yourself portrayed in quite such a public fashion, but as it's fiftyseven years since the original family snaps of two Kennedy brothers were taken our appearance has maybe moved on a little.

The artist Paul Kennedy and his brother Adam are also forging an identity as the Kennedy Brothers and are having their first joint exhibition in Glasgow this summer. I will post fuller details of this nearer the time. Meantime their work can be viewed online at www.paulkennedyart.com and http://adamkennedyart.com and Braewell Galleries can be found at http://www.braewellgalleries.co.uk

St Abbs 1954