Alasdair Gray has described himself as “an increasingly old Glasgow pedestrian”, a tag that somewhat downplays the author and artist’s reputation as one of the most radical and significant creative minds to come out of Scotland in the last century.
, 1972)
"The Horse’s Mouth is a novel by Joyce Cary, published in 1944, in which a penniless, elderly artist describes the last few weeks of his life, after release from Wandsworth [Prison] where he has been jailed for making threatening phone calls to a former art dealer. His studio is an almost derelict Thames barge, the setting is mostly a few poor nearby streets, his friends are a local postman, cobbler, barmaid and a schoolboy whose hero-worship greatly annoys him. Gulley Jimson’s story would be miserable were it not so upliftingly funny and full of believable folk described with Dickensian vivacity.
In the late 1940s and 50s my father subscribed to the Readers’ Union, a book club that posted to our home several good books a year. It sent us The Horse’s Mouth in 1945 when I was twelve and wanted to be an artist and realised (because teachers and adults I trusted told me so) that it would be just about impossible for me to earn a living as one.
The book suggested that attempting to paint a great work of art for people who did not want or like it was well worth attempting, even if the painter finally failed. It also introduced me to the art of William Blake, because Gulley Jimson kept quoting his poems, which sent me to Glasgow’s Mitchell Library where I studied facsimiles of his books. The mural he was finally painting in a derelict church during its demolition was on the theme of Creation, the theme of the first mural I painted in a church."
Alasdair Gray has described himself as “an increasingly old Glasgow pedestrian”, a tag that somewhat downplays the author and artist’s reputation as one of the most radical and significant creative minds to come out of Scotland in the last century. He’s penned such ribald, experimental novels as Lanark, his “modern Divine Comedy”, which combines a portrait of a Scottish artist as a young man with a future urban hell. His art is just as brilliantly inventive. Partly inspired by that other famed walker of city streets, William Blake, his woodcuts, paintings, book illustrations and murals are ornate with decorative details and Celtic symbolism, and range from portraits of his friends and family to celestial visions of the metropolis.
Text by Skye Sherwin
Aladair Gray’s work is currently included in the British Art Show 7, currently at Nottingham Contemporary and touring UK institutions throughout 2011. His latest book, A Life In Pictures, is published by Canongate.
All Images excluding The Horse's Mouth cover were taken from Alasdair Gray's book A Life in Pictures, published by Canongate
