SANDY MURPHY RGI PAI and MICHAEL DURNING RSW RGI PPAI PAI
14 September - 12 October 2024
MICHAEL DURNING RSW RGI PPAI PAI
Born in Irvine in 1970, Michael Durning graduated from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in Dundee in 1992, and as a postgraduate from Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen in 1995.
Continuing the tradition of Scotland’s representational painting, his work values a sense of place, history, and Scottish cultural identity. With strong values in draughtsmanship, composition and observation.
His use of blighted and broken images of monuments, buildings and landscapes creates powerful statements that question attitudes to Scottish heritage and culture.
He says: ‘The Western seaboard is a place of monumentality. It is where big skies and long horizons are punctured by thrusts of rock; where weathered and broken geology form a constant theme for me as an artist. Our landscape at its furthest reaches is the most captivating, the waters of the west are an emptier place and the townscape increasingly ordered. The mountains are forever resolute in conflict with the elements; the weather challenges those who want to capture the experience. Monumental achievements from a bygone age are pictorially fascinating, rusting, corroding, neglected or repurposed; giving powerful visual dissonance to forgotten corners of our histories.’
