News

Frontiers: Painting in Scotland Now at the Royal Scottish Academy for the Edinburgh Art Festival, August 2024

The exhibition was curated by Robbie Bushe RSA and Flora La Thangue, to demonstrate the lasting vitality of painting across a range of genres and themes. Each artist was asked to reflect on why painting was central to their practice, in an age where digital images flood our sensibilities continuously.

“Painting is the most vital of all artforms because it is an embodied practice of becoming over an extended time frame. Vital in that vita means life, essence and the animated principle of living beings: through an orchestration of dabs, slabs, dashes and slashes of paint we are brought into the world of the painting, which, like a two-way mirror, both reflects and projects inwardly and outwardly.

To draw is to raise to the surface that which had hitherto been withdrawn. Painting is a form of dis-covering aspects of our world from within it, sensually and directly. These remarks can be said for all approaches to painting, but for me fidelity to experience is essential, as a response to the abundance of the world always in flux, to quieten my ego and see things as they appear and before they disappear. It is painting in a mode of second innocence, without the trappings of intentionality or expected progression. My attention is absorbed by the play of light on leaves or water, of the relative weight of air and rock, and of all the vivid interactions and reactions occurring every moment around me. I am part of the interplay, not a passive observer. My spirit is excited by the allure of what I am seeing, feeling, hearing and touching, and I am moved to bring the experience to life through the slippery material of oil paint on canvas. It is an enormous labour, amounting to several phases developed over weeks and months, but with careful nurture it reaches its conclusion as an equivalence of experience. To draw is also to equalise.”

Philip Braham

© 26^th May 2024

 

Prescient Nature (2023) at The Scottish Gallery in February 2024

 

Prescient Nature is an exhibition of paintings made during the last two years, presented at The Scottish Gallery in Edinburgh through February 2024. There are 32 paintings in the show, and they fall roughly into four groups.

The first is rivers and pools with their glistening or reflecting surfaces. Radiant River, Early Winter and Radiant River, High Summer and a companion piece titled Mirrorpool in a Birch Wood are subjects whose locations are just a short walk from my studio. The winter painting has a soft, misty light, and the tree in the foreground is a dark silhouette against the rippling water and the wan sky, while the summer painting is bright and vibrant, the still water reflecting the greenery of the riverbank. When I was working on these, I was thinking about Monet’s series of paintings of The Seine at Giverny in which he made atmospheric studies that captured the qualities of light at different times and seasons. Monet was an incredible painter, but where he can convey a vivid impression through deft brushwork, stillness and quietude are central to my paintings, and they take many weeks to complete. I am always attuned to the light in a landscape as I’m walking through it, and often I’m stopped in my tracks when it seems like a vision has coalesced suddenly and the landscape is revealed momentarily, like a crystallisation, before it dissipates again into the background. It’s these moments of heightened intensity that I try to conjure in paint over many weeks at my easel.

A second group is of woodlands, again close to my home and studio. I feel I am most alert when walking among trees. Alert to the flickering light and moving shadows, to the saturation of colour, particularly after rainfall adds its gloss, but alert too, to the smells and sounds, to the wind in the branches and the creaking and groaning of the trees. I try to capture all the sensory features that fill me at these moments, to distil them into an orchestration of colour and form, tone and texture, to give a truthful rendition of the exalted experience through controlled brushwork. Dawn in Torlum Wood is one such moment, seen when returning from watching the sunrise from the top of Torlum Hill. A screen of tall lacey pines reaches skyward, the first rays only just beginning to light the verdant forest floor, but in the distance the land is already filled with a golden light.

A subset of the woodland images are paintings of storm damaged woods. Torlum Wood on the outskirts of Crieff is a place I have visited countless times, mostly made up of dense pine planted in uniform rows, but in amongst these were isolated oaks and birch. After Storm Arwen struck in late November 2021 the forest was shattered into a sea of branches, trunks snapped like matchsticks, roots torn from the ground. Only the ancient deciduous trees survived, their strong roots held firm and their leafless limbs withstood the battering gales. I was deeply saddened to see such devastation, and I felt compelled to record it in a large painting titled Apocalysis. In the catalogue that accompanies this exhibition, I wrote:

“The woods I was so fond of was rendered unrecognisable overnight. I was reminded of the painting ‘We Are Making a New World’ by Paul Nash, painted after the end of the First World War and depicting a ravished landscape of blackened, broken trees, with a sun rising above the backdrop of red mountains. I took photographs of the forlorn scene as a record of its fate. Three months later we witnessed the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and every evening our TV’s showed the bombardment of Ukrainian towns and cities, wreaking ever greater destruction and havoc. In the wake of these events, I painted Apokalypsis, the first in a series of paintings conveying storm damage. The Greek meaning is revelation rather than catastrophe. Rationally, Nature cannot be said to be prescient, but imagination permits us that thought. Thus, to me, the destruction wrought by the storm acted as a harbinger for the destruction of Ukraine and later of Gaza, and no doubt of other places yet to come. Our forbearers understood such signals in Nature, but we disregard this as superstitious nonsense. Those forewarnings can survive in the artistic imagination.”

For Nash, the aftermath signalled hope of revival and renewal, that the worst was finally over. Apokalypsis is less optimistic, and recent news reports suggest that the post-war period has shifted now to a pre-war footing, such is the threat to peace in the West.

The third group is a series of studies of the sea at night, its dark depths echoing the deep dark sky above, a simple division of two worlds meeting at the horizon. I began making small works on paper with Indian ink washes, adding white pencil into the highlight areas in these close toned drawings. But while on a family holiday to the Mediterranean coast of Tunisia, I saw an altogether different and much more vibrant sea and sky, and from these I produced the paintings Dark Sea, Tunisia and Night Crossing. This North African coastline is where many of the illegal migrant crossings to Europe begins, and the distant horizon is one of yearning laced with risk. The paintings don’t reflect that plight, they only describe the intense dark blue of the sky against the luminous ochre of the shallow shore, but the black of the distant sea as it approaches the horizon is more ominous, metaphorically hinting at the dangers that lie in wait.

The final group of paintings are of winter scenes, snowy fields, and woods, rising mists and low-lying fog, sleepy, peaceful landscapes like the largest painting in the exhibition, Homeward at Dusk. The title infers that the labours of the day are finally finished, and that the warmth of home awaits the weary traveller. Beyond the treeline lies the town shrouded in low cloud, and above that, the last of the light still holds off the curtain of darkening cloud as nightfall descends. These snow scenes have a quiet serenity that suggest that peace will come with the sleep of winter.

I hope I have given you a flavour of what you will see in Prescient Nature, and I very much hope that you will visit The Scottish Gallery to see the work in the flesh, because scale is important in painting, and while digital reproductions can approximate the images well, they cannot give you the experience of seeing a painting in real life. The exhibition runs from 8^thFebruary to 2^nd March in the main gallery. Podcast script.

 

The Scottish Landscape Awards

I was shortlisted for the Inaugural Scottish Landscape Awards, exhibited at The City Art Centre in Edinburgh from November 2023 to March 2024. My painting was used for publicity materials and featured in reviews and newsreels.

 

 

Academicians VI

I was invited to exhibit alongside Victoria Crowe, Wendy McMurdo and Paul Furneaux in the Glasgow Print Studios exhibition of four RSA artists, from November 2023 until February 2024.

“Glasgow Print Studio is pleased to present the sixth in a series of exhibitions bringing together the outstanding work of four well-respected Royal Scottish Academicians. Ghost orchids coalesce out of the darkness, forms flicker through a snowy landscape and the natural world finds its way into ours through printmaking, painting, photography and sculptural forms in this broad ranging survey of work by four artists at the height of their practise.”

“Braham’s paintings and photographs capture the beauty and fragility of the natural world, while Crowe’s work explores the boundaries between representation, reflection, and surface. Furneaux’s woodblock prints are inspired by the Japanese Mokuhanga tradition, and McMurdo’s experimental photographs capture the fleeting beauty of plants and flowers.”

 

Apokalypsis (2022)

Torlum Wood is a familiar location, but it was devastated by Storm Arwen, turning to a sea of foliage and twisted limbs, with once noble trees snapped like matchsticks. It appeared alien and unrecognisable, yet a terrible beauty began to settle as the sun set, lighting the farther woods in an orange glow. The world had been witnessing the desolation of Ukraine by its Russian invaders and little could be done to lessen the destruction of towns and cities, yet the morale of its people held strong. The storm from the northeast that ripped through Torlum Wood had abated, and in time the trees would grow again and provide a safe refuge for the creatures of the forest.

The title ‘Apokalypsis’ is the ancient Greek term for revelation. It means, variously: laying bare, making naked a disclosure of truth; instruction concerning things before unknown; events by which things or states or persons hitherto withdrawn from view are made visible to all; manifestation, appearance.

 

 

2021 In Brief

2021 began with the disappointing news that my exhibition ‘Closer to Home’ at The Scottish Gallery in Edinburgh would be online only due to Covid-19 resurgence and lockdown. The gallery did their best to mitigate the situation through additional promotion and a virtual walkthrough video, and it turned out to be a huge media success. Several newspapers covered the show with articles, features and even front-page spreads!

Perth Museum & Art Gallery offered to host the exhibition as soon as they were able to reopen to the public, from the end of April until June 5^th, and the work looked great in their elegant gallery. At the same time, I exhibited new paintings at the newly established City Contemporary Art gallery in Perth, just around the corner from the Museum, so it was a double boost to lift the spirits.

The following month, Beaux Arts in Bath exhibited a selection from ‘Closer to Home’ for a magnificent group exhibition of landscapes from across the UK, titled ‘North, South, East, West.’ It was my first showing with Beaux Arts and I look forward to working with them in future.

At the end of September, I heard that my nomination to become a member of the Royal Scottish Academy had been successful, and I am extremely grateful to Victoria Crowe and Will Maclean for presenting my work and persuading fellow academicians to vote for me. I look forward to supporting the Academy by contributing to future exhibitions and events.

Finally, I want to mention the online gallery Singulart, with whom I have enjoyed representation during the last three years. ‘Ophelia Bathing’ is a major piece and was sold to a London collector in November. The process of collecting and delivering was smooth, as was the invoice payment. Visitors on their platform are able to give star-ratings to the artworks viewed, and I am delighted to say that mine is currently at 4.9 out of 5, with over 2.5K voting. I will be uploading new artworks to their platform in the coming days.

Looking ahead to 2022, I will contribute to the 196^th RSA Annual Exhibition from April – June, and at the same time I will be showing with Thompson’s Harpenden in a survey show of Scottish painting. Another exciting development is that I have been working on a collaborative book project with writer and academic Rev. Dr. Celia Kenny, and that will pick-up momentum in 2022, but news on that later…

 

 

Election to THE ROYAL SCOTTISH ACADEMY

At the end of September 2021, I heard the exciting news that I had been elected to the Royal Scottish Academy, and I join an illustrious membership of academicians that includes my nominators Victoria Crowe and Will Maclean. I am grateful for their support, and to all those who voted me in, and I look forward to contributing to exhibitions and other events in future.

The first opportunity arose with the RSA Christmas Show 2021, and I was delighted when the organisers chose one of my paintings to be used to publicise the exhibition, including posters, banners and Private View cards. The paintings are shown below:

 

CLOSER TO HOME – Perth Museum & Art Gallery, 30 April – 6 June 2021

I am delighted that Perth Museum and Art Gallery will exhibit the series of paintings and photographs of the Perthshire landscape that I produced over the last three years since moving from Edinburgh to Crieff. The exhibition marks the reopening of the venue since the second lockdown. Several of the paintings were produced during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic and a melancholic ambience is perceptible in these artworks. The photographs record the changing seasons, weather events and agricultural usage that brings a new appearance to familiar landscapes close to my home. If there is any silver lining to the time of the pandemic it is that people, in general, have come closer to nature while social activity has been denied, and with that, perhaps gained a lasting appreciation of the continuously changing features of their personal landscape.

 

 

 

Contextual Films for ‘Closer to Home’ at The Scottish Gallery, 7 – 30 January 2021

Closer to Home – Torlum Wood to Torlum Hill

Closer to Home – Lovers Walk

 

Media coverage for ‘Closer to Home’

The Courier Weekend magazine 30/1/21

The Scotsman Magazine 16/1/21

The Courier 8/1/21

‘Closer to Home’

The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh

6th – 30th January 2021

A solo exhibition of 24 paintings and 23 photographs, based in the landscapes around our home in Crieff, Perthshire. During the early part of 2020 the coronavirus COVID-19 caused a lockdown across the UK, and a number of the paintings produced during these months are partly a response to the affects of living in a fearful time.

 

‘Great Scots’

The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh

3rd – 27th June 2020

This exhibition was presented online only as the country was in lockdown to suppress the spread of Covid-19. The artworks were mostly created while in isolation. I had been very busy creating a new series for a solo exhibition with The Scottish Gallery for January 2021, so my contribution was selected from these finished paintings.

 

‘Fully Awake’

Edinburgh College of Art

27^thJuly – 25^thAugust 2019

Fully Awake is a cycle of exhibitions with an intergenerational approach to how painting is taught. Thirteen artists currently teaching at UK art institutions will show their work alongside that of two guest artists, one of whom they have taught, and the other who has taught them. Exhibiting artists include Sonia Boyce, Alexis Harding and Dan Hays. The show has been curated by Ian Hartshorne and Sean Kaye for the organisation Teaching Painting.

I chose to nominate James Morrison as a tutor who had influenced my approach to painting, and Blair McLaughlin, a former student who is forging a successful career. I selected one painting each, to exhibit alongside ‘Spectral Vision on High Ground’ (2017).

 

‘Back to the Drawing Board’

Roger Billcliffe Gallery, Glasgow

31^stMay – 30^thJuly 2019

 

Roger Billcliffe Gallery is staging a summer exhibition devoted to contemporary drawing in Scotland, addressing the challenge that drawing is no longer taught in art schools and therefore has become irrelevant to contemporary practice.

I was delighted to find that one of my drawings had been selected for the front of the invitation card, given that the selected artists represent the very best of contemporary Scottish art.

 

‘A Year Closer to Home’

A photographic diary by Philip Braham

Published by BLURB, November 2018

ISBN 978-1-38-800585-6

During the first year of our move from Edinburgh to Crieff in rural Perthshire, I documented our new surroundings as the seasons changed, exploring the landscape with fresh and eager eyes. I gave this book the title ‘A Year Closer to Home’ because I came to understand that the idea of ‘home’ need not be rooted in the impressions imprinted during childhood, warm and strong though these are, but that the sense of a longing-to-return might instead be for a destination that still lies ahead: a horizon that has now come into view.

 

In Time and Silently The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh

I opened the 2018 season of exhibitions at The Scottish Gallery in Edinburgh with a solo show comprising 38 recent paintings. The title was taken from the final line of the final poem In Time that Seamus Heaney wrote 12 days before his death in 2013. Like the poem, this body of work considers the temporal nature of our existence that is overshadowed by our immanent nonexistence, yet a kind of transcendence is afforded through the ecstatic acknowledgement of the abundance of nature, ever renewing.

 

Ages of Wonder Scotland’s Art from 1540 to Now

The Royal Scottish Academy has mounted an historic exhibition highlighting works from its impressive collection, and I was pleased to be included in the selection as one of the recipients of the RSA Morton Award for lens-based media. ‘Falling Shadows in Arcadia: The Offering’ was acquired from my solo exhibition at the RSA in August 2010. The exhibition runs from 4th November 2017 – 7th January 2018.

 

Hermeneutics of Practice University of Dundee

This summer Professor Nicholas Davey retired from teaching Philosophy at the University of Dundee, but his legacy lives on through his extensive writings on Gadamer and Hermeneutics. In honour of his enormous influence, colleagues and ex-students presented papers that attempted to address meaning/significance/interpretation in contemporary art practice and institutionalised knowledge production. I was delighted to give a talk on the ideas behind the new series of paintings to be exhibited at the Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, in January 2018, titled ‘In Time and silently’

 

The Vigorous Imagination Revisited Roger Billcliffe Gallery, Glasgow

Roger Billcliffe showed recent examples of works by all 17 artists originally selected for the survey show back in ’87. The original exhibition was realised after Frank Dunlop, the director of the Edinburgh International Festival, got wind of the protest that Ian Hughes and I had staged on the steps of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1985. He introduced us to Timothy Clifford, then director of the National Galleries of Scotland, and he agreed to present the largest exhibition of contemporary Scottish art up to that date. The Vigorous Imagination remains one of the most popular exhibitions that the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art has presented.

 

The Vigorous Imagination: Then and Now The Fine Art Society, Edinburgh

This exhibition marked the 30th Anniversary of the ground-breaking exhibition staged at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art during the Edinburgh International Festival in 1987. All 17 artists were represented by historic examples and new work, and the show at FAS and Roger Billcliffe in Glasgow got great media exposure.

 

Scottish Identity Gallery 23, Edinburgh

I was the featured artist in an exhibition at Gallery 23, curated by Dr. Julie Hansen. The show ran from 31st March to 20th April.

 

Critic’s Choice Bohun Gallery, Henley-on-Thames

I was among the artists selected by Clare Henry to show in her Critic’s Choice exhibition at Bohun Gallery from 4th – 27th February 2017.

 

A Wind from the North update:

The Times published an excellent review of the exhibition on November 8th 2016, perceptively written by Giles Sutherland. To read it without the paywall go directly to Giles’ blogspot by following this link:

http://gilessutherland.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/philip-braham-wind-from-north-roger.html

The painting reproduced in The Times review was an important earlier work from 2006 that led to a series titled ‘Drift’ in which photographs move into constellations on the surface of water.

 

 

A Wind from the North

My first solo exhibition with the Roger Billcliffe Gallery opened in Glasgow on 29th October 2016, and will run until 22nd November, The reception to the new work has been fantastic, and I am delighted with how the show looks in the elegant space. The Herald published an extensive review on the opening day, which was hugely supportive:

http://www.heraldscotland.com/arts_ents/14831035.Ghosts_in_the_landscape/?ref=rss

One of the paintings that attracted quite a bit of attention was ‘Traces in the Dew’ which was the final canvas completed for the show.

 

 

Flora Depicta

I was invited to contribute to a beautiful exhibition at the Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh in July 2016, featuring, among others, two artists I admire enormously: Derrick Guild and Victoria Crowe. One of the paintings I included was ‘Copper Beech’, shown below:

 

Union Gallery

Union Gallery opened the doors to its beautiful new gallery in Edinburgh’s West End in May 2016. I was pleased to show two major paintings in the inaugural show, ‘Ophelia Bathing’ and ’21st Century Sublime’. The works are prominently displayed, in the window and over the stairs to the lower gallery, and I am grateful to owner Alison Auldjo for her enthusiastic support.

 

The End(s) of Art

In March 2016, I organised a symposium with Oisin Keohane at the University of Dundee, that brought philosophers, artists and curators together to discuss whether art, as an ontological experience, is over now.

The title of the symposium comes from the thesis proposed by Arthur Danto in 1984, that the collapse of modernism in the 1960’s marked the end of the era of art. He describes the contemporary era as post-historical, beyond the pale of the narrative that drove the avant-garde, and the self-consciousness period of postmodernism with its identifying stylistic tropes. There are no boundaries to push against in the truly pluralistic present. Anything may be considered as art; therefore nothing has significance in a transcendental or ontological sense. This presents real difficulties for museums, critics, theorists and engaged practitioners in art, in attempting to justify its continuing importance. What follows, in the absence of critical consensus, are discursive arguments on a local level, with an ebb and flow of ideas emerging and subsiding with time.

While artworks will continue to be made, their function will not be enlightenment in an ontological sense, but will merely service a market and function as the visible signs of wealth, taste and power: currency among the global collectors that continue to acquire the work. This argument often underpins the writings of Marxist-leaning critics, for whom significance is diverted away from the thingness of the artwork to its reception as a conspicuous badge of power in global politics.

 

 

 

Roger Billcliffe Gallery

I am delighted to join the Roger Billcliffe Gallery roster, and I will show a group of paintings in response to the theme ‘September Song’ from September 1st in Glasgow. These works were completed this summer as part of a series of nocturnes.

 

 

 

 

Pentland Fine Art

I was pleased to be invited to contribute a group of paintings to an exhibition at the recently opened Pentland Fine Art gallery in Aberdeen. ‘Between Worlds’, ‘Love Letter’ and ‘Border Post’ were chosen for the group exhibition which took my title ‘Between Worlds’ as its theme. July – August 2015.

 

Writing

I presented a paper at the inaugural conference ‘Hermeneutica Scotia’ at the University of Dundee (May 2015) which sets out my philosophy about the autonomy and integrity of the artwork that still opens a possibility of it transcending its object status. This runs counter to many recent commentaries that foreground the social impact that art can extort: context is more significant than the work itself. While I acknowledge that art can have a political dimension, it is shortsighted to think that the impact of an artwork is contained within the horizon of the time it was produced. Art can transcend temporality, and the best works being produced today most certainly will! The paper has been published on Academia.org and the abstract submitted was as follows:

Painting Itself (Out of a corner)

In David Joselit’s influential essay ‘Painting Beside Itself’ he examines the place of painting in a digital economy where the image of the artwork is disseminated globally, and its power (both politically and economically) is inflated correspondingly. He describes paintings that consciously engage with networks as ‘transitive’ in that they are submitted to infinite dislocations, fragmentations and degradations, escaping the modernist trap of reification. The centrifugal effect of the Internet on the dissemination, reception and marketing of the painting as image, in an age where images proliferate as never before, supersedes the significance of the painting as object. What is at stake is the concept that painting (both as verb and noun) maintains fidelity to experience, and that its value can only be judged before the work itself.

In my paper I will examine this claim with reference to Hegel’s definition of Art in relation to Spirit, to test Joselit’s proposition that art is now at its terminus. In defiance of the glossy/operatic/diaristic/ironic/satirical/primitive/psychedelic imagery that has come to define our era, I call for a return to authenticity by fastening to the world in willful naivety, buoyed by Merleau-Ponty’s insistence on the primacy of phenomenology and ‘indirect ontology’ in ‘Eye and Mind’ and through a reappraisal of Michael Freid’s concepts of Absorption and Theatricality, to provide a centripetal balance that returns the object and the place of painting back to itself.

 

 

 

 

Commissions

Commissioned paintings form an increasing proportion of my output but they don’t receive the same level of exposure as exhibited works: they are not reproduced in catalogues, nor are they discussed in reviews, and they are only seen by people connected to the client. Nevertheless they can be just as significant to one’s artistic development as self-directed works. Two examples of recently commissioned paintings are shown below, and their luminosity results from the quality of the pigments used:

 

 

 

Talking

I have embedded a link to a video walk-through of my solo exhibition at The Scottish Gallery in Edinburgh in January 2014, where I talk about some of the ideas that generated this body of work: