The Gray pound

Alasdair Gray once described himself as "a fat, spectacled, balding, increasingly old Glasgow pedestrian", but this self-deprecating assessment doesn’t quite do justice to the impact he’s had on the Scottish cultural landscape. A Glaswegian polymath; talented novelist, poet, playwright and artist, Gray is a man motivated by an intense desire to create, and this is reflected in his prolific output. Perhaps best known for his writing, particularly his novel Lanark, a cult classic which he describes as a "Scottish petit-bourgeois model of the universe", his artworks, often illustrations featured in his books, are worthy of equal attention. Coinciding with the release of Gray’s visual biography, ‘A Life In Pictures’, two exhibitions - one at the Talbot Rice Gallery showing his graphic works and the other at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art displaying his portraits - offer an insight into the world of Gray the artist. Speaking to The Journal Gray, now in his 75th year, discussed his work and reminisced about his student days.

"We have lots of students here but we seldom have originals like Alasdair," remarked one of Gray’s tutors at Glasgow School of Art. Gray studied Mural Painting at GSA from 1952-57, and refers to his time there as enabling him "to shape my view of the world". He was and continues to be a headstrong ambitious individual and began writing Lanark when he was just 18. He says that "the teachers in Drawing and Painting never adversely criticised my work they just were highly uncomfortable with it." As a Post-Impressionist, Gray drew inspiration from artists such as Van Gogh, Gauguin and Seurat but it is the influence of William Blake that seems most dominant in his art. Perhaps he found an affinity with Blake because he too was a writer and artist who illustrated his own work. With their strong outlines and chiselled features, the figures in Gray’s graphic works and mural paintings appear statuesque, calling to mind the illustrations in Blake’s ‘Songs of Innocence and Experience’.

Although the teachers in Drawing and Painting expressed no interest in Gray’s work he nonetheless enjoyed his time at GSA. Gray learned a lot from his creative fellow students and the head teachers of departments who had relaxed attitudes towards their pupils. He recalls a tutor who got into trouble for being too amiable, saying, "Glasgow had had a head of painting...but the governors got rid of him because he was too friendly. He didn’t seduce the women, he occasionally had a pint with them and would talk to them as if they were potentially artists on a par with him, and that wouldn’t do!"

Gray says he wouldn’t want to attend art school now. "I realise how much more horribly off I would have been in a modern art school such as GSA now... where drawing and painting has been replaced by a thing called Visual Art. That conceptual art has replaced drawing and is more important I’ve never quite grasped." Referring to the merging of ECA with the University of Edinburgh he comments: "That’s what money is doing nowadays - merging everything it can. It’ll no doubt make a happier situation for the accountants and for the government that wants to ensure that all tax advantages go to the wealthy. Money talks!"

The concept of the artist as a struggling eccentric has become almost a cliché, attached to the myths of the likes of Gauguin and Van Gogh, and yet it is the perfect description of Gray with his theatrical enunciation and booming laugh. He is the embodiment of the ‘starving artist’ having struggled financially almost all his life. Before finding a publisher for Lanark he illegally sublet his house in order to support his art, and would go to The Ubiquitous Chip, a Glasgow restaurant, and sketch on napkins and plates in exchange for a meal. The advice he gives those who want to pursue a career as an artist or writer is purely practical: "Try to get hold of a house in which you can sublet some rooms to lodgers. That will give you a small, steady but very useful income and teach you a lot about life."

Having started writing and drawing as a means of escaping from his dull life as a Glasgow schoolboy, Gray’s work is now a physical representation of the love he has for his home city. This is not commercial art - if there’s such a thing as art for art’s sake, this is it.