CHRISTINE MCARTHUR
oranges from Sevillie mixed media on board – 76 x 92cm
Christine McArthur spring summer autumn winter
7 - 24 May 2024
PREVIEW DAYS
Thursday 2 May: 12-6
Friday 3 May: 12-6
Saturday 4 May: 11-4
The entire exhibition can be viewed at www.thackeraygallery.com
The exhibition continues until 1pm on 24 May 2024
All work is available to view and purchase as of now 18
spring summer autumn winter
For Christine McArthur an exhibition is never simply a collection of recent paintings; the exhibition itself, and its contents, will have evolved over months of consideration, developing and adjusting the original idea towards a completed statement. A single drawing may have been the spur for a group of a dozen more; a mood, an event, a single flower, a change in the weather can all provoke an idea around which an exhibition will be built.
At Glasgow School of Art, she found it difficult to work among a group of other students in one of Mackintosh’s huge studios; she also hated life drawing and her tutors eventually allowed her to work at home. Her Diploma Show in 1975 broke the boundaries of a traditional final year display – no life studies, but a group of large painted drawings which won her a Post-Diploma year and a Travelling Scholarship.
In 1976, working alongside her friend Helen Wilson, her display included three-dimensional structures, paintings, prints, pastels, fabrics and embroideries, an inter-disciplinary step not seen before. It may not at first have amused her tutors but, with Peter Blake as the external examiner, its originality, flair and control – the expansion and development of ideas seen in the paintings – won her a Distinction and a further Travelling Scholarship.
McArthur has continued to pushed boundaries throughout her career, exploring each new medium she encountered, embracing new materials and finding new uses for the traditional, all working alongside each other in succeeding exhibitions.
But underlying all of these different techniques and materials is – drawing. Fifty years of sketchbooks in her studio provide the bedrock for the observational oils and pastels, collages approaching abstraction, delicate and intense watercolours, and the embroideries which have continued to punctuate her career.
This exhibition of Four Seasons continues this fiercely independent point of view. Ten years of art school life and then teaching instilled in her the concept of the year beginning in September. Her three sisters – teachers and educational librarians – reinforced the timescale of the academic year.The seasons, and their order, have always been important to her, as a cook, as a poet and, most obviously here, as an artist. They control what is available to draw and paint. The annual burst of colour in the new anemones, snow drops and hellebores – winter flowers. Summer poppies, autumn fruits. The pressure to paint them all before they disappear for another year.
And balanced against all of these, the timeless and season-less Japanese gardens, all embroideries, a slow medium which forces patience and contemplation but which brings to the fore one of McArthur’s most consistent assets – an innate sense of pictorial design.
moon mountain paths
embroidery on linen – 64 x 67cm
Dr Smith’s arboretum - the slope
mixed media on board – 23 x 23cm
blue himalayan poppies
acrylic on board – 23 x 23cm
a table in autumn
mixed media on board – 102 x 102cm
acrylic on board – 38 x 38cm
anemones in Mary Armour’s vase
mixed media on board – 38 x 38cm
a table in spring
mixed media on board – 102 x 102cm
nasturiums
acrylic on board – 23 x 23cm
bright anemones
acrylic on board – 22 x 20cm
wicker chair with blue cup
mixed media on board – 76 x 76cm
snowdrops in a bone marrow pot gouache on board – 20 x 18cm
hellebores in a medicine glass gouache on board – 20 x 18cm
mixed media on board – 76 x 92cm
winter tangerines
gouache on board – 31 x 31cm
lemons on a glass dish
gouache on board – 31 x 31cm
birthday flowers
mixed media on board – 76 x 91cm
yellow welsh poppies
acrylic on board – 23 x 23cm
french field poppies
acrylic on board – 23 x 23cm
a table in winter
mixed media on board – 102 x 102cm
Dr Smith’s arboretum - the pool
mixed media on board – 23 x 23cm
the beauty of blank space
embroidery on linen – 60 x 71cm
glass bottles: almonds
watercolour & gouache on w/c paper – 22 x 30cm
golden plums: whitebaits
watercolour & gouache on w/c paper – 22 x 30cm
a table in summer
mixed media on board – 102 x 102cm
the birthday party
mixed media on board – 40 x 60cm
painted eggs
mixed media on board – 40 x 60cm
embroidery on linen – 53 x 67cm
seedpods from Miro’s garden watercolour & gouache on w/c paper – 22 x 30cm
Christmas Eve
acrylic and ink on board – 23 x 23cm
snow trees with blue shadows
acrylic and ink on board
– 23 x 23cm
darjeeling and china
mixed media on board – 40 x 60cm
Tokyo story
mixed media on board – 40 x 60cm
BIOGRAPHY
Christine McArthur was born in Kirkintilloch, near Glasgow in 1953. She studied at The Glasgow School of Art between 1971 & 1976, which included a post-diploma year. After graduating she taught and produced book illustrations until the demand for her work enabled her to paint full time. Her early work was primarily in oil and she became well known for her large-scale still life paintings on canvas.
In the late 1980s she began to work in oil, pastel and watercolour but more recently she has reverted to oil, as well as acrylic and collage. Christine McArthur was awarded Scottish Education Department travelling scholarships in 1975 and 1976 and was elected a member of the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts in 1990. In 1995 she was elected a member of the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour.
In 1997
John Lewis commissioned four large murals – each 6ft x 15ft - for the Glasgow store in 1999. In 2002 she received a commission from John Lewis for murals for the extension to their Peter Jones store, Sloane Square, London.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS FROM 1984 – PRESENT:
Peter Potter Gallery, Haddington; Sue Rankin Gallery, London; Fine Art Society, Glasgow; Portland Gallery, London; Roger Billcliffe Gallery, Glasgow; Ancrum Gallery, Roxburgh; Open Eye Gallery, Edinburgh; Courtyard Gallery, Crail; John Martin Gallery, London; Gertsey Gallery, Moscow; Gertsey Gallery, Atlanta, USA; Lemon Street Gallery, Cornwall; Ainscough Gallery, Devon; The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh; Thackeray Gallery, London
PRIVATE AND CORPORATE COLLECTIONS:
Lord Irvine of Lairg; Scottish Arts Council; Glasgow Caledonian University; Arthur Anderson; Scottish Nuclear PLC; University of Strathclyde; Amerada Hess Corporation; Craig Capital Corporation; Lillie Art Gallery, Milngavie; Argyll Group PLC; United Distillers PLC; Clydesdale Bank PLC; Macfarlane Group (Clansman) PLC; Royal Bank of Scotland PLC; Export & Import Bank of Japan; John Lewis Partnership PLC (Glasgow, Nottingham, Edinburgh & Peter Jones, London); Gertsev Gallery, Moscow; Gertsev Gallery, Atlanta, USA; Pernod Ricard; Brian Maule, Chardon d’Or, Glasgow; Edinburgh Tapestry Company; Aberdeen Asset Management; Jamjar Restaurant, Bridge of Allan; Gamba Restaurant, Glasgow; Café Parma, Glasgow.
AWARDS:
S.E.D. travelling scholarship 1975, and 1976. Arts Council Award 1979, and 2004. Glasgow Soc. of Women Artist’s Trust Fund Award, Lauder Award; R.G.I., N.S. Macfarlane Award; Alexander Graham Munro prize, RSW
Front Cover: lemons on a glass dish – gouache on board – 31 x 31cm18 THACKERAY STREET | KENSINGTON | LONDON W8 5ET
www.thackeraygallery.com | enquiries@thackeraygallery.com | 020 7937 5883
Opening Hours: Tuesday to Friday, 10am - 6pm, & Saturday, 11am - 4pm
