They'll become the faces of modern Glasgow, twelve unknown women who will represent the diversity of the lives lived in Scotland’s biggest city well beyond its boundaries.
Yet the individuals who will define the lives lived by the women of modern Glasgow in a new multicultural art project this time next year, don’t know it yet.
Artist Gerard Burns has launched a search for 11 females to become the face of a new year-long portrait project during which he will paint a different woman each month.
The venture, entitled Mother Glasgow, will lead to a touring exhibition as well as a documentary focusing on the lives of the women he captures on canvas.
Launching the project on International Women’s Day, Burns said: “Essentially I am looking to find 11 women from around the world who have chosen to make the city of Glasgow their home. They could have arrived in Glasgow 50 years ago or last week. I want to find a real spread of women from all backgrounds, women of interest who have chosen to make the city their home for whatever reason.
“In a time in society when we are increasingly polarised. It’s too easy for people to lump people into a homogeneous group, seeing others as ‘them’ or ‘they’.
“When you are presented with an individual from a particular ethnic group it’s much more difficult to generalise and lump them into categories.
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“That’s especially the case with oil paintings. I’ll be taking the effort and care to present each individual in a way that will make it difficult for people to do that.
“I will enter into their lives within the context of their lives, there will be a relevant narrative aspect to it. I want to emphasise the cultural aspects of each of the sitters part of the story.”
Burns will make a short documentary telling the stories of each woman. The artist also plans to tour the final exhibition of 12 portraits to unexpected venues up and down the country.
He said: “I staged an exhibition called New York to Easterhouse in a shopping centre in Glasgow in 2016, and my hope and plan for this is that we would take it on the road, out into communities throughout Scotland.:
The New York to Easterhouse exhibition saw Burns transfer his Brush With Inspiration show of celebrity portraits featuring the likes of Alan Cumming, Elaine C Smith and Billy Connolly from the white gallery walls of Manhattan’s SoHo to the Shandwick shopping centre eight years ago.
“I’d like to take the portraits of these women around Scotland, to similarly unusual places,” said the 62 year old from Cumbernauld.
“I’m aiming to release an image and some of the story of the person in each portrait every month leading up to the final exhibition.”
The idea for Mother Glasgow was sparked when Burns’ painted the city’s former Swedish Lord Provost Eva Bolander.
“I’ve had the idea for four years,” he said. “But covid hit and we couldn’t do it. The whole idea of the project is to celebrate multiculturalism within the city of Glasgow. International Women’s Day has really grown from relatively humble beginnings to become a major global event and I’d like to add something to the conversation by doing this in Glasgow. If International Women’s Day is about anything it’s about multiculturalism.”
Each woman will own the portrait by the end of the project,” said Burns, who is appealing for nominations via his website. “I won’t be paid for this, and it’s a tremendous amount of work to take on for free.
“But it takes me on an amazing adventure over the next 12 months, meeting people and lives I wouldn’t have experienced otherwise. And I get to do 12 paintings.”
Meanwhile Burns will also release an album next month of music recorded but never released in the 1980s.
The artist was lead singer in Glasgow pop outfit Valerie and The Week of Wonders alongside Greg Kane and Brian McFie.
Former teacher Burns said: “We are the band who never were. We signed a good deal and were in there with the likes of del Amitri in Glasgow at the time. But there’s no record of us ever having existed.
“We had the original recordings remastered and pressed to vinyl. And it’s sounding brilliant.”
The band will launch their ‘debut’ album at The Lantern House in Cumbernauld on 13 April.
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