Like many artists of his generation, Craig Peacock got his first break thanks to being spotted at his Glasgow School of Art degree show by Cyril Gerber, who died in August at the age of 94.
Gerber was a rare being on the art scene: an astute businessman who knew how to sell and who revelled in artists' company. He loved the feeling of total immersion in their world and they, in turn, loved him back.
He set up The Compass Gallery in Glasgow in 1969 as a non-profit-making gallery with the aim of introducing bright new talent and helping young artists establish themselves following the tricky passage from art school to the "real world". Many artists who are now household names were given a break by Gerber, and it is fitting that the first exhibition at the gallery since his passing is a solo show devoted to the work of an artist who has enjoyed a long relationship with the Gerber family.
Craig Peacock graduated from GSA in 1985 and his work was included that year in the annual New Generation show which Compass still holds to showcase its pick of the degree shows in Scotland's leading art schools. Ten years later, having exhibited widely, both internationally and nationally, Peacock had his first solo exhibition in Compass. According to Jill Gerber, Cyril's daughter, who deals with the day-to-day running of The Compass Gallery, Peacock is "an artist with serious intent, and a lot to say".
"This solo show was organised over a year ago, and when I went to his studio to see his new work, I was really taken aback," she says. "He has made a major shift since I saw it last in 2010 at William Burrell's former house in Great Western Road during the Glasgow International Festival."
Gerber described Peacock's new work as "deeply private and soulful", which made me think it would be a gloomy affair. But when I dropped into the artist's studio in Glasgow's east end last week to see the work before it headed to the Compass – some of it still in progress – I was taken aback by the outpouring of positive energy I felt.
The starting point for Peacock's new work came from a visit to Paris he made in February last year with students from Reid Kerr College in Paisley, where he teaches graphic design and animation four days a week. The sight of Gericault's famous painting The Raft Of The Medusa in the Louvre, coupled with the memory of Velazquez's famous painting depicting Venus preening herself (The Rokeby Venus) at the National Gallery in London, mingled in his mind to provide a starting point for an intimate search for a source of light.
Light is the mainstay of this new work, be it in a painting of a seascape with a silver sliver where the horizon meets the sea and a vague murmur of a rainbow within the glow of the sky; a drawing of a star-spangled sky in Back Of Keppoch, Near Arisaig; an oil painting depicting an artist's studio with a blank canvas a luminescent square in the centre; or a Peacock-style "re-enactment" of The Raft Of The Medusa, complete with sacrificial lamb taking centre stage. The lamb is also hiding the modesty of a splayed body, but that's another story -
"This work is like a diary," Peacock explains. "It's a story told without a beginning, a middle or an end. After being in Paris, I worked on two paintings at the same time; the Medusa painting and the Venus drawings. All the work since that point has flowed from this source. I suppose the light could be seen as a religious icon. I don't know; that is up to the viewer. I do know that when you look at light, it becomes religious."
I am always struck by the way some artists depict scenes in which there are no people. Yet at the same time, you can feel the presence of the figure. Craig Peacock falls into this category. As several of his drawings of figures reveal, he has a wonderful line, soft and subtle; yet the strongest works in this show are the large oils in which something is waiting to happen.
The canvases on the easels are blank, yet glowing. The background is sepia-tinged, yet there is no sense of foreboding. It as though all our yesterdays, as well as our todays and tomorrows, are suspended in one moment. Peacock has captured this sliver of light and hope on paper and on canvas. No mean feat.
Craig Peacock: Diary (In The Midst Of It), Cyril Gerber Fine Art & Compass Gallery, 178 West Regent St, Glasgow (0141 221 3095, www.compassgallery.co.uk) until November 3.
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