Over
the last few days I’ve been reading online the tributes and obituaries to John
Bellany, the Scottish painter who died last week aged 71. I didn’t actually
find out about his death until Saturday when I was stood in front of a
particularly marvelous large early painting by Bellany at ‘Aquatopia’, the
rather unfortunately named, but quite good exhibition at Nottingham
Contemporary with a friend who mentioned it.
I
was initially a bit shocked, but then not entirely surprised as he had a
formidable reputation for living life to the full, especially when it came to
the demon drink, which had taken it’s toll on his health. This can be seen with
his need for a liver transplant in his forties and suffering three heart
attacks, one on the way to a major retrospective of his work in Glasgow in
2005. Indeed, thinking about it, I was not even sure if he was still alive,
having lost touch with his work in the last ten years having previously been a
fan. You would be hard pressed to find a more passionate painter in modern
times, and fittingly he died with a paintbrush in his hand.
I
used to live in Bellany’s native Edinburgh (he was actually born and raised in
Port Seton, about ten miles from the Scottish capital), and saw his work everywhere
in the local galleries, and even hanging in the living room of notorious
reformed Barlinnie hard man Jimmy Boyle, whose house I used to pass on the way
to the sea. I furtively and enviously looked across to the view in the window
where a large colourful Bellany painting hung on the wall. My fellow artists in
the studio I worked with used to gently mock his work, but I always admired it
and learned a great deal about figurative painting and composition from him. I
think my artist friends, who were largely Edinburgh born and had studied at the
College of Art, were just understandably tired of his work everywhere and the
‘legend’ of the man in the city. My
friend Donald, thought those self portraits in his hospital bed after his liver
transplant were hilarious: ‘just too much, give it a rest,big man’. But I think
they are great, and love their brutal honesty. They are in the great European
tradition of artists such as Goya, Munch and Beckmann, some of my other
favourite painters.
I’ve
really enjoyed looking at his recent paintings in the last few days: they are
largely scenes of Port Seton harbor in the most magnificent colour, a real
return to form after a few years where I thought things were looking repetitive
and over mannered. My favourite paintings though are the ones created in his
destructive, alcoholic days, which are chaotic, everything teetering at the
point of collapse. The frenetic handling of paint disturbingly captures the
artist’s inner mental turmoil.
As
that other great Scottish painter, Alan Davie said of him, at his best John Bellany
was a painter of ‘true and powerful Nordic power’.
