The Scottish Show 2015, Panter & Hall, 11-12 Pall Mall, London, 020 7399 9999, www.panterandhall.com 28 January - 20 February
Ever since a small private gallery called Panter & Hall (after its founders Tiffany Panter and Matthew Hall), opened in London in 2000, it has represented a strong stable of Scottish artists, both living and departed. Each year it celebrates their work with a popular annual exhibition, simply titled The Scottish Show.
It's always a joy to see such a strong and varied body of work by Scottish artists being given due prominence in London.
This coming Wednesday, the 16th Scottish Show exhibition opens and it features works by over 40 painters, covering a broad range of styles, subjects and genres. The exhibition includes works by successful contemporary painters such as Audrey Grant, Chris Bushe, Lara Scouller, Robert Kelsey, Jenny Matthews and Margaretann Bennett, as well as well-kent figures of modern Scottish painting, such as David McClure, Ian Fleming, John Boyd and Alberto Morrocco.
The sea seems to run through this collection of work. From the tactile oil paintings of Chris Bushe in which you can almost touch the rock in the foreground through to dappled, light-filled seascapes of Alberto Morrocco.
There's a beautifully still, melancholic feel to Charles Simpson's Leaving Mallaig, while the working sea is writ large in Iain MacNab's Portuguese Shipyard, which depicts boatbuilders working on a beach under a clear sky stippled with puffy white clouds. Ian Fleming's East Coast Harbour, painted in 1948 is also a thing of beauty.
Other masters of east coast light, James Morrison and Archibald Dunbar McIntosh are also represented here, as is Annette Stephen, the Aberdeen-born painter who introduced the great Joan Eardley to the tiny fishing village of Catterline in 1950. Stephen lived in Catterline almost all her adult life and was continually inspired by her surroundings on this cliff-top village.
All the work is for sale now.
Tam O'Shanter at the Lillie: A Tale Told in Paintings, Lillie Art Gallery, Station Road, Milngavie, 0141 956 5536; www.edlc.co.uk Until 18 March
The legend of Robert Burns occasionally threatens to overshadow the legends the Ayrshire-born poet wrote about in such an open and vivid manner during his short, colourful life.
So it's heartening to step inside a contemporary art gallery and trace one of his most colourful pieces of writing, Tam O'Shanter, in the shape of a series of paintings by the late Alexander (Sandy) Goudie.
Not only that, you can gaze upon an actual manuscript copy of Tam O'Shanter in the Bard's own hand dating back to 1790. A work of art in its own right, these yellowing pages are filled with Burns' familiar words and his writing is a thing of beauty. His letters slope in tune with the flow of poetry with never a blot or a smudge interfering with the thing itself. It's as though you are reading the poem for the first time.
Tam O'Shanter at the Lillie: A Tale Told in Paintings features 30 large works from Goudie's celebrated collection depicting the Burns classic. The collection is currently on loan to the Lillie Art Gallery in Milngavie from Rozelle House in Ayr.
Hung in sequence, you can walk yourself through the narrative of this poem and take in all the rich details in Goudie's paintings, from the black lab lifting its leg in front of the hostelry in which Tam got 'unco fou', to the tiny gravestone with the words TAM O'SHANTER written underneath a skull and cross-bones.
The poem, which was performed at an opening in the gallery last week by Ayrshire-born actress and singer, Karen Dunbar, combines drama, humour, horror and folklore. Goudie was a supremely gifted painter and a skilled draughtsman and illustrator. In these paintings, his attention to detail mingles with an unmistakable theatricality.
A labour of love which took the artist, who died in 2004, the best part of a decade to complete, they are best enjoyed as the ill-fated Tam drank his ale. Divinely.
There's a whole festival taking place in East Dunbartonshire called TAMfest 2015 based around this exhibition. See website for details.
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