Born 1934
Lives Glasgow
The New Room
1972
Pencil, crayon, oil paint, watercolour and acrylic paint on brown paper on board
106x127cm
Courtesy Sorcha Dallas
Alasdair Gray is often described as a polymath, having worked as a teacher, painter, illustrator, playwright, scene painter, essayist, poet, novelist and muralist. His books include the seminal meta-novel Lanark (1982) and the Whitbread Prize-winning Poor Things (1992), the imaginative scope of which is echoed in murals such as Arcadia (1980), which depicts a generation of Glasgow bohemians wreathed in trees, birds and flowers. Gray’s numerous works on canvas, illustrations and prints are similarly grounded in a combination of fantasy, figuration, satire and poetry, as in From the Soul’s Proper Loneliness (2007), which likens the desire for love to an egg carried in a snake’s mouth. (SL)
