Gongoozler: Lesley Banks
Callendar House, Falkirk.
Tomorrow until June 25.
www.lesleybanks.com
LIKE many people who lead a creative life and earn a living through the fruits of their labours, award-winning painter Lesley Banks has struggled with the business of keeping on keeping on. In a revealing interview with The Herald's Teddy Jamieson, the Glasgow-based artist recently said of the art world: “It’s a real treadmill. You’re accepted and then you’re not accepted […] I did think: ‘Should I get a job in Marks and Spencer? This is too difficult.’ I looked at their online form and as I hadn’t had a job in so long I thought: ‘I can’t even get a job in M&S.'"
Luckily, a couple of years ago, Banks had a collection of "moments" while she walked her new dog, a spoodle called Bella, along the banks of the Forth and Clyde Canal near her home in Bishopbriggs.
To cut a very long story short, Banks found herself re-energised and threw herself into a series of paintings as the first ever artist in residence with Scottish Canals. She even kicked her form-filling fear into the long grass and successfully applied for funding to Creative Scotland, supported by Scottish Canals and Falkirk Community Trust.
As a result, in the last 15 months, she has travelled the Forth and Clyde, Union, Monkland, Caledonian and Crinan Canals, creating paintings which celebrate the environments and stories of Scotland’s 250 year old waterways.
Along the way, she has captured the everyday sights of the nation's inland waterways in more than 40 paintings and is inviting the public to go "gongoozling". This colloquial term for someone who takes joy from watching the world go past from a tow-path has become her watchword as well as the name of her new exhibition.
From Andy Scott's monumental Kelpies in Falkirk to a humble shadow under a bridge, Banks paints it all. And she is a gorgeous painter of delicate detail.
Gongoozler will move to The Lillie Gallery in Milngavie, on July 8.
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