CALLUM INNES (b.1962) Exposed Painting...

CALLUM INNES (b.1962)
Exposed Painting Pewter (2000)
Oil on linen, 174.5 x 170cm

Provenance: With Kerlin Gallery, label verso.

If the work of any painter can be said to exemplify the expression Less is more, it is surely that of Callum Innes. An exceptionally thoughtful, self-critical artist, he has developed a rich body of work that depends as much on what he leaves out and, indeed, what he takes away, as on what he includes. He was born in Edinburgh in 1962 and it is indicative of a certain streak of stubbornness that he is based there still, rather than gravitating towards London, as his career path logically suggested. He studied in Aberdeen and Edinburgh. At that stage his work was figurative, but he was increasingly dissatisfied with it. A residency in Amsterdam marked a turning point.

In retrospect, on can see that he was looking for a way to articulate presence in painting without recourse to an image per se. He found he could do that by emphasising the physical substance of the paint. Not, as some artists do, by building up thick impasto. On the contrary, he accentuated presence by introducing absence. His method is to selectively dissolve areas of colour with the application of washes of turpentine. The process involves a delicate balance between accident and design and has a high rate of attrition. He abandons more paintings than he keeps.

It has, though, proved to be remarkably fruitful in terms of the pictorial and interpretative possibilities it created. And in terms of public recognition: he won the Nat West Art Prize in 1998 and the Jerwood Painting Prize in 2002. One spare composition can speak of time, memory, impermanence, entropy, of the concepts of something and nothing. As Fiona Bradley wrote of his work in 2006, The Exposed Paintings are the ones that seem to engage him the most The development of his painterly language is intrinsically linked to the development of this series. (Callum Innes, From Memory, Hatje Cantz, 2006)

Aidan Dunne