Peter Cameron Fine Art

Garry Richard Gilchrist - Biography

Gilchrist was born in Scotland in 1952. He first heard the words artist genius and elegance in connection with the football legend Slim Jim Baxter and he has remained an idiot fan ever since.

Slim Jim Baxter was his first god and his first love. The Glasgow that Gilchrist grew up in was a black and white movie about an ancient breathless New York whore.

Colour was not the main event then along came Baxter. Baxter never ran. He didn't know the meaning of the word. He only ever walked or crawled, partly because he was drunk most of the time but mostly because he didn't give a damn. He could send six grown men in the wrong direction - in any direction he chose - simply by shaking a hip or dropping a shoulder. In short, Baxter was and still is the most casually elegant thing ever seen on any field of sporting endeavour.

Most nights in Glasgow in the 1960's he could be seen stumbling in and out of taxis, bars, hotels and casinos generally with two pretty ladies hanging onto each arm. Baxter had class. Elegance and class and a touch of Mac the Knife about him. Not everybody's cup of tea of course but Baxter wasn't interested in tea and he was most definitely the first major influence on the work of Garry Richard Gilchrist.

Gilchrist's work is essentially figurative and expressionist. Writers have influenced him just as much as painters. Hemingway, Dostoyevsky, Kerouac, Apollinaire, Wilde, but most importantly, Richard Brautigan. Gilchrist used to drink with Brautigan in San Francisco.

It was years after leaving San Francisco that Gilchrist finally realised how much of that city had entered his work and how much of Gilchrist's San Francisco was in fact Richard Brautigan. Needless to say Gilchrist's favourite book is The Hawkline Monster.

Painters who have cast their spell over him include Modigliani, Soutine, Utrillo, Matisse, Kirchner, Van Gogh and the Scottish Colourists. Gilchrist doesn't paint for money. He has foolish ideas regarding freedom and believes that it is not the quality of his work that is in question but the quality of perception of the spectator.

If a brick fell on his head, his partner Josephine would take the side of the brick. After his time at Glasgow School of Art he spent some years in the South of France and there colour and light entered his blood and from this he has never fully recovered.

Featured artist:

Garry Richard Gilchrist

Garry Richard Gilchrist studied at Glasgow School of Art between 1969 and 1971.

He has spent the majority of the last twenty years living and working from his studio in London, and has exhibited extensively in both the UK and the USA.

Garry’s work specifically depicts the euphoria, the fragility, the beauty, the mayhem, and the hilarity of modern day, urban life. His poetic paintings take us on  a rollercoaster journey, via a cast of angels, princes, villains and rogues, that simultaneously ascend, swoop, teeter, swagger and stagger their way through personified, kaleidoscopic cityscapes.

His work reflects the precarious chance and the gamble of life in the 21st Century and its ultimate universal pathos. Garry delivers his message in a totally unique voice.

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