Porteous Brae Gallery, Stromness, Orkney, until 24 September 2008

Marian Ashburn

THERE IS something very intimate about drawing – the best sketches leave no space between the artist, the observer and the action observed. Look for example at Toulouse Lautrec, or Adolphe Von Menzel, Bruegel or Durer, or anybody Japanese. Intimate, sad, funny, swift portraits of the human condition or the animal world, they have the power to make us feel closer to what’s real.

Cartoonists, too, inhabit an immediate world. Their skills as draughtsmen often unfairly derided, they are at the cutting edge of art as action, inhabiting the now. We’re seeing in the rise of the graphic novel an increasing confidence in the idea that the line is as telling, as mobile, as the noun or the verb – and that’s good news.

Why are there so few grown up books with illustrations? I always want them… imagine Will Self, or A L Kennedy, with front plates and pics! Eric Linklater’s short story collection Sealskin Trousers is immensely enhanced by engravings by Joan Hassell. So three cheers for Alasdair Gray, who makes his books a total line – and – word experience.

Architectural drawing, given that its province is the grounded and linear, might have to be seen differently – an extension of the impersonal pile of blueprints for a kit house on a desk perhaps. Yet, as we see from Marian Ashburn’s tantalisingly spare show at Porteous Brae, somehow shape and space on a street move as fast as a Scarfe cartoon or a Degas ballerina.

Her love of catching buildings ‘on the brink of moving’ gives houses and streets a new lease of life – they look as if they’re about to jump out of their foundations and dance. People, pets, cars don’t intrude, though post boxes, telephone boxes, signposts, traffic bollards, are duly noted and sometimes allowed a rouch of red or yellow – which creates a nice distinction between the garish man made and the old stone.

The autistic savant Steven Wiltshire’s city landscapes are amazing. Detailed, structured, controlled, the identity of every city he charts is recognisable. But at the heart of his vision lies his autism. It’s an odd gift, to have perfect recall. Somehow, missing bits out, swerving some lines, swirling some streets into a cobbledy circle, seems more human. Ashburn gives us the human face of our architecture.

I’m drawn back oddly to the Enlightenment, and all those energetic Scottish pictures of Edinburgh building itself. Pictures of buildings are pictures of history, culture, state of mind. Our Orkney history is often stuck in the Norse and medieval, and I like the sense in this exhibition that we’re in an 18th century world – merchants making siller – which is now full of 21st century businessmen. The elegant silver frames round these drawings of local townscapes offer a cool grounding to the busy-ness of works like ‘Kirkwall Shops’, or ‘JM Stevenson and Hydro’.

Such apparently banal titles reveal a quick sensitivity to the politics of the arts world in Orkney – there’s a desire ‘no te show off’. Nothing pretentious here. ‘Grooves and the Sports Shop’ – a weel-kent Kirkwall corner – elegantly distorts the old Scottish baronial style, and reminds us that the CDs in the music shop are sitting inside the poshest of frontages.

The elegance of her line and the restraint of the colour – a crayon dash here or there – makes you think about how we perceive our built space – as a dynamic thing? How often do we notice the colour of a wet street? A traffic cone? More than that, she then – like all good draughtsmen – reminds us of the negative space – the stuff with nothing in it, if you like, the bit you’d cut out if you were making a collage of houses with a child.

In Stromness, the houses are cut by sea; in Kirkwall, by pavement and sky. I’d always, as a Stromness girl, had a prejudice against Kirkwall – a kinda grey Scotchy place, more like Golspie than Orkney, I thought, apart from the Cathedral. Wrong again! I learn, through Ashburn’s work, to see the unexpected and enjoy it.

There’s one thing that frustrates me about this beautiful, well presented little show. Quite the most remarkable piece, and I think the most important, in terms of Ashburn’s artistic development, is a portrait of her daughter Jane. Nothing could be more unlike the drawing I’ve been discussing. Forget elegance and restraint; here we have rough chunks of colour – an attack on reds, mostly, like John Bratby but better, and a direct engagement with the canvas.

There’s fine contrast between pretty cherry wallpaper and a child on a chair with a face which is on the brink of all sorts of discoveries – beauty, pain, change. It’s hard to move forward out of the comfort zone and this stunning brave portrait does just that. I want more portraits. It’s time for the chronicler of Orkney street geography to turn her eye to the folk aboot her, let rip with that glorious colour sense, and indulge in some more thick loud brushwork.

That’ll be amazing. This timely reminder that Ashburn is an important painter finishes a fine inventive season for Porteous Brae. Roll on next year.

© Morag MacInnes, 2008

Links

• Porteous Brae Gallery