Foreword We are delighted to present An Artist’s Life, act i, an exhibition and publication covering Alexander Goudie’s early beginnings and development: Glasgow, family and his love affair with Brittany. A further exhibition, act ii, will be unveiled in 2024 which looks at the later career of the artist and bigger theatrical projects. We thank Lachlan Goudie for writing new text and providing archive material to bring this project to life and also his sister Gwen for her personal contributions. We have further insights from James Knox, Director of The Fleming Collection, Roger Billcliffe and Professor John Morrison. I have strong memories of visiting the home and studio of Sandy Goudie in Arnewood House, Glasgow surrounded by the extraordinary profusion of his creativity, lines, couplets, stanzas and epic poems of imagery making up a grand, operatic production. At his beautiful Victorian home and studio in Glasgow there was a great atrium which held a large, suspended white bird cage with doves; all around were vitrines of modelled clay, paintings, frames, monumental props arrayed around and above on the gallery level more canvasses; stretched, primed, started, paused. No project was too grand: a commission for all the artwork and designs for the interiors of a giant ship from Brittany Ferries; Strauss’s Salome or Burns’ Tam o’Shanter. The artist thought big but honed his aesthetic to the last flourish, for a highlight on a ceramic jug or vital pentimento in a life drawing; attention to detail was obsessive and his art was an extension of his personality. From the declaration explicit in his early portraits that says: ‘I have arrived,’ to the touching depiction of the children, to his love letter in paint to his Bretonne wife Maïnée, to accomplished easel paintings and designs and sketches fizzing with creative energy, the personality of the painter is not hard to find and forms a vital, recently overlooked contribution to post-war Scottish art. guy peploe the scottish gallery
Alexander Goudie, c.1955
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