WORK OF THE WEEK | 14th October: ANTHONY SCULLION | Lost Cause

It was many years ago that I saw my first work by Anthony Scullion. That was in my pre-art-dealer days, my pre-most-things days. I was a drifter, in my twenties, and running from one bright colour or alluring smell, to the next one... absorbing sights. It was at a time when the New Glasgow Boys were at their height. Testosterone, booze, drugs and glamour followed these guys as they brought Scottish figurative painting to a new white-cubed international brilliance, but others were left out and never joined the party, especially Glasgow girls, but also artists literally less punchy than Peter Howson. Anthony Scullion was one of those. I can't remember where I saw the painting of an emerging figure, with warm colours, half-soul and half-flesh. It must have been in the window of a gallery in Edinburgh or Glasgow, and it must have caught me as I passed by looking for my thing, and it stuck.

Anthony Scullion was near the top of my wish list when I started Kilmorack Gallery in 1997, but it wasn't until last year that we finally made contact. Scullion made too many moves - from Glasgow to South Africa and then to south coast of England - for me to find him. ‘Lost Cause’ is the largest of the ten paintings on the wall today. I could have picked many others for my work of the week because, like in a family, each painting is an individual. Colour, line, gait and the way each child looks either out of the painting at you, or elsewhere in the direction of travel, makes me care deeply. The figures are small and the landscape large, but ‘Lost Cause’ is a theme that Scullion returns to, and the cause is less lost because the two figures are together.

The first question is ‘what are the wings?’ In an earlier ‘Lost Cause,’ she is holds them up creating a crucifix. But that is how we see her. It could be a toy made with the dream of escaping and flying to better place. The child also has a hood with ears, like a bear or a mythical creature. Dreams are these children’s strength. It is what they carry – the older girl with her wings and the younger with his ears. The world would be a better place if we, as adults, still carried the wings we made and wore hats with ears.

The subject of ‘Lost Cause’ is both sad and political, but the painting is uplifted with warm colours – a spectrum of pinks and oranges in the foreground leading to pink-grey behind them. It is a masterful palette held together with strong drawn lines. And behind this, if you look carefully, there is a graffitied town with roofed buildings – a home - another thing they carry with them. Scullion’s great achievement is that he has created a painting that now sits on my shoulders, and I carry it with me.