27 September – 28 October 2023
Painters in Parallel celebrates the shared artistic life of Duncan and Una Shanks. The couple met at Glasgow School of Art in the mid-1950s and married in 1966. They moved to Davingill House at Crossford in the Clyde Valley in 1967 and have remained there ever since. The couple were drawn to the varied landscape of the Upper Clyde Valley, maintaining a commutable distance to Glasgow where they both lectured for many years. Since taking early retirement in 1979 and 1982 respectively, both artists have been fully immersed in their own individual painting practices. The countryside of the Clyde Valley, and the colourful riverside garden of Davingill House, is the inspiration behind each of these artist’s visions. While both share the subject matter of their immediate surroundings, their approaches and technique vary considerably.
Duncan’s practice is informed by his deep personal connection to the natural world, and his knowledge and appreciation of poetry and music. His work will begin in nature; be that on a hill track or in the garden, his sketchbook recording observations and visual notes to be used and reimagined once back at the easel. He is driven by an overwhelming need to make permanent the moments and happenings he has witnessed in nature. Previous exhibitions of Duncan’s work have focused on the drama of the landscape and the balance between structure and chaos. His exhibition at the Talbot Rice Gallery in 1988 featured the Falls of Clyde as a primary subject. Those works captured water cascading down the high craggy rock-face, crashing like a wall of pure energy against the surface of the painting. The deep wooded glen above Crossford and moving storms on Tinto Hill have also been a rich source of inspiration, in works which crackle with lightning and billowing clouds. The paintings in
this exhibition have been carefully selected by The Gallery, and feature many of Duncan’s celebrated subjects from over the course of his career. These have been curated into specific chapters over the following pages, reflecting the Shanks’ life together and parallel painting practice.
Like Duncan, Una’s work has evolved and grown over time, mimicking the life of the garden –cultivated, yet left to grow free and wild. Una picks flowers outside her front door, brings them into the studio and sets to work directly onto the paper, without preparatory sketches. She captures their form in beautiful, intricate detail, before allowing her imagination to take over. The empty spaces and voids between flowers and stems fill up with decorative motifs and symbols which, over many years have developed into wild, densely patterned compositions which are rich in colour. Her working method is meticulous and time-consuming. Una is reticent to share any artistic inspirations, however similarities can be drawn with Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Margaret MacDonald, whose work celebrated pattern and design in the natural world. Having sold almost every painting she has ever exhibited, Una’s work is highly sought after. In recent years she has chosen to withdraw from exhibiting, so for many her work in this exhibition will be a revelation.
Painters in Parallel is the first time both Una and Duncan Shanks have exhibited together. We are deeply grateful and privileged to both artists for allowing us access to their studios, and for the chance to tell the story of a shared artistic journey which has – up to this point – been left untold.
Tommy Zyw Director, The Scottish GalleryA double portrait of Una and Duncan Shanks with their dog Stubbs, Crossford, c.1970
ByDuncan Shanks, from the artist’s studio
Una Shanks was born in 1940 and enrolled at Glasgow School of Art in 1958, studying textiles in the progressive department headed by designer Robert Stewart. A string of teaching posts followed graduating, including a year at Jordanhill College, which was later merged with the University of Strathclyde. She lectured in teacher training at Hamilton College until 1982 before taking early
Duncan Shanks was born in Airdrie in 1937 and studied at Glasgow School of Art from 1955 to 1960. During his Post Diploma year he was awarded a travelling scholarship which enabled a visit to Italy. On his return to Glasgow he joined the Art School staff where he lectured until 1979, before leaving to concentrate on painting full-time. Duncan’s first solo exhibition was hosted by Stirling University in 1974. Since then he has exhibited worldwide with notable public exhibitions including Falling Water at Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh in 1988, Patterns of Flight at
Public Collections
Arts Council Collection, London
City Art Centre, Edinburgh
Dumfries and Galloway Council
Dundee Art Galleries and Museums Collection
East Dunbartonshire Council
The Fleming Collection
Glasgow Life Museums
Glasgow Museums Resource Centre
Glynn Vivian Art Gallery Collection, Swansea
Government Art Collection
Highland Council
retirement, enabling her to focus on her artistic practice full-time. In the eighties and nineties, Shanks exhibited regularly at the Fine Art Society (later Roger Billcliffe in Glasgow), The Royal Glasgow Institute, Royal Scottish Academy and Royal Society of Painters in Watercolour, where she was elected an RSW in 1988.
Wrexham Art Centre in 1991 and Poetry of Place at the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery in Glasgow, which coincided with the bequest of the entirety of his sketchbooks to their collection in 2013. Shanks is a member of the Royal Scottish Academy, the Royal Glasgow Institute and Royal Society of Painters in Watercolour. He has been the subject of twelve solo exhibitions at The Scottish Gallery; his most recent, The Riverbank, was the Edinburgh Art Festival exhibition for 2022.
The Hunterian, University of Glasgow
Lillie Art Gallery, Glasgow
Low Parks Museum, South Lanarkshire
Royal Scottish Academy of Art & Architecture, Edinburgh
Southbank Centre, London
South Lanarkshire Council
The Stewartry Museum, Kirkcudbright
University of Edinburgh
University of St Andrews
Una and Duncan Shanks with their dog Guthrie, Crossford, 2023
UNA SHANKS
1. Thistledown and Poppies, 2001 ink and watercolour, 69 x 100 cm
UNA SHANKS
UNA SHANKS
UNA SHANKS
4. Lilies, 1992–2023 ink and watercolour, 70.5 x 100 cm
UNA SHANKS
5. Summer Border, 1990 ink and watercolour, 99 x 69 cm
UNA SHANKS
Duncan Shanks’s studio, 2017.
My painting is a journey through a landscape of self – which starts in the real world of my garden. Here, I am the centre of it, observing and recording seasonal change but searching also for the moment when thought stops and the paint itself opens up the mind’s eye to another hidden world.
Duncan Shanks – At Home
DUNCAN SHANKS
DUNCAN SHANKS
DUNCAN SHANKS
DUNCAN SHANKS
the Kitchen Window, c.1975
DUNCAN SHANKS
DUNCAN SHANKS
15. Sun, 2022
DUNCAN SHANKS
I have chosen, over the years, to work from the familiar landscape of the river and valley around my home. Knowing a landscape and its geography intimately through walking and drawing has let me concentrate immediately on that special moment which is different from anything that I have seen before.
DUNCAN SHANKS
DUNCAN SHANKS
DUNCAN SHANKS
DUNCAN SHANKS
DUNCAN SHANKS
Living deep in the valley, enclosed and inward looking, I have to escape to the hills to free my mind and spirit. Tinto Hill is part of my local landscape. The air, space and light of its summit give me the freedom I crave, the vistas and cloudscapes, the visual stimulus to create.
DUNCAN SHANKS
DUNCAN SHANKS
DUNCAN SHANKS
DUNCAN SHANKS
Walking the tracks which criss-cross the valley, an array of images and events crowd the vision – images of sun and moon, frost and fire, hawthorn and rose, hare and hound, blackbird and crow. They have become an integral part of my life and work.
DUNCAN SHANKS
DUNCAN SHANKS
DUNCAN SHANKS
DUNCAN SHANKS
40. The Pines in Moonlight, c.1990 acrylic on monotype, 45 x 50 cm
Published by The Scottish Gallery to coincide with the exhibition
Duncan & Una Shanks
Painters in Parallel
27 September – 28 October 2023
Exhibition can be viewed online at www.scottish-gallery.co.uk/shanks
ISBN: 978 1 912900 72 5
Production: The Scottish Gallery
Design: Kenneth Gray
Photography of paintings: John McKenzie
Photography of the Shanks, studios and garden: The Scottish Gallery
Print: Pureprint Group
All rights reserved. No part of this catalogue may be reproduced in any form by print, photocopy or by any other means, without the permission of the copyright holders and of the publishers. All essays and picture notes copyright
The Scottish Gallery.
Cover: Una Shanks, Thistledown and Poppies, 2001, ink and watercolour, 69 x 100 cm (cat. 1) (detail)
Inside front cover: Duncan Shanks, Return of the Sun I, 2022, acrylic on paper, 100 x 70 cm (cat. 7) (detail)
Inside back cover: Una Shanks, Still Life with Tulips, 2023, ink and watercolour, 28 x 43.5 cm (cat. 3) (detail)
Back cover: Duncan Shanks, Moon, 2022, acrylic on paper, 70 x 100 cm (cat. 16) (detail)
