Exploring new directions

Victoria Reeves, the Treasurer of Timespan in Helmsdale, reports on their current exhibition of work by JOHN BELLANY.

JOHN BELLANY’S exhibition at the Timespan Gallery in Helmsdale is full of life and new, exciting work – the most recent painting was finished just a week before the show opened last week.  For fans of Bellany or those who would like to be introduced to the work of this extraordinary artist, this exhibition is essential viewing.

John Bellany CBE, RA, is not only one of Britain’s finest living artists he is also up there with the best of Scotland’s cultural ambassadors.  He travels the world – laughing all the while – exploding with optimism. Painting is a need, he says – an inner fulfilment and an essential and joyful part of his day. 

Bellany is walking around the Timesan Gallery enthusing.  He loves being back in Helmsdale and Timespan in particular.  He is delighted with the way his work has been hung and is thrilled to be reunited with paintings he had not known were to be part of the exhibition.

Every picture tells a story, but Bellany is not in a hurry to explain.   He wants viewers to make up their own minds, and  read into his work whatever they want.  The exception is one of the watercolours of his wife, ‘Woman of Canisp’.  It was painted, he said, the previous Sunday after she had fallen and cut her head.  

The picture exudes a proportionate sympathy – perhaps it was a distraction for both of them from a minor accident that could have been more serious. Helen gazes out with bandaged head, looking a bit sorry for herself: rather like a child  fighting to maintain a performance that will reward her with pity and attention. The drama is transient. The picture is touching and lovely.

Bellany is the  son and grandson of fishermen and boat builders rooted deeply in the Calvanist tradition of fire, brimstone and pessimism.  Those familiar with his early work  will know of his strong religious feelings:  his concern and despair with human cruelty, the sacred and the profane.  There was a time when all Bellany’s art seemed to have been brushed with a persistent sense of foreboding – as if all life was just a step away from the precipice. 

“Bellany now feels free to explore innocence, joy, humour and colour in a way he could not before.”

If this gloomy predisposition caused the illness for which the only recommended cure was a liver transplant, it was recovering from the same operation in 1988 (by no means a certainty) that delivered the new, changed and conspicuously happy John Bellany. He had hardly emerged from the anaesthetic before demanding pen and paper. Immediately he was drawing.

“I watched myself get well as my pictures were pinned up on the walls surrounding my hospital bed.” It was then that he started craving colour, which became the new oxygen of his survival.

Bellany now feels free to explore innocence, joy, humour and colour in a way he could not before. The Timespan exhibition is  fantastically light and colourful. While sometimes challenging, it is never stressful, with the exception of ‘The Storm Eyemouth’, which recalls the horrendous disaster of 1892 when a whole fleet of fishing boats – each with five or six men aboard  – were all lost in a freak coastal hurricane.  “The story of Eyemouth was my bedtime reading when I was 8 years old” says Bellany. “It shaped me.”

‘The Storm Eyemouth’ is a tremendous work. It is large, hangs unframed, and follows you around the gallery from its central vantage point. It tells a tragic story of loss and the collapse of a community, but the colour and brightness of the brush strokes seem also to offer a hint of hope and survival.

To reinforce this theme, on the next wall are stunning  oils of ‘Frazerborough’, ‘Crail’, ‘Port Seaton’ and ‘Nice’ harbours. Benign, full of interest and beauty, there are no people in these pictures and no ambiguity. Just a gorgeous view on a sunny day, soaked with the colour of dreams.

“John Bellany’s powerful work has inspired a new pride in Scottish artists.”

The colour continues. ‘Leaving Nice’ is a large sweep of an oil painting. It shows a building defining a fork in the road with the Diversion sign pointing the same way as Monaco. There are other passing references to gambling  in ‘Rose & Crown’ and  seediness in the delicious ‘Dieppe’. These  prints are excellent value for those wishing to own a Bellany but not able to afford the price of his oils or watercolours.   

The new portraits, particularly the ‘Diva’ series and the breathtaking ‘Early Evening Harbour’ are soft and kind, though the eyes of the women are still confrontational.  The stunning ‘North Sea Maiden Triptych’ (ink wash) and ‘Feathered Hat’ (pen and ink) are totally haunting.

John Bellany’s powerful work has inspired a new pride in Scottish artists.  His paintings are in the collections of major museums and art galleries throughout the world, including the National Galleries of Scotland, The Tate, The Metropolitan Museum in New York, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Now his work has come  back to Helmsdale. This is a must-see exhibition. Leave plenty of time and think about it at your leisure afterwards over a cup of coffee in the River Café overlooking the Timespan garden.

© Victoria Reeves, 2004

The John Bellany exhibition is at Timespan, Shore Street, Helmsdale (01431 821 327), until 11 September (opening hours 10am–5pm Monday – Saturday, 12.30pm – 5pm Sundays