EDINBURGH.- This summer, as part of this year’s Edinburgh Art Festival, Ingleby Gallery opened an exhibition of new paintings by Glasgow based Andrew Cranston that began yesterday and will continue through September 16th, 2023.

Andrew Cranston (b.1970) is a painter-storyteller, a way of working that is enhanced by his often painting on the linen bound covers of old books. His stories coalesce in the process of making - the paintings emerging gradually through the manipulation of his materials: layering, lacquering, bleaching, collaging and constantly re-working his way into images that seem to shift backwards and forwards in time. He has described one of his works as ‘a painting that came out of my brush one day’, a statement that sums up his approach. They are resolutely contemporary in spirit and yet connected by a strong thread to painters of the past, especially perhaps to the intimism of Vuillard and Bonnard, or to Matisse or Munch.

These are narrative paintings, without a clear sense of what the narrative means, drawn from the artist’s memory and observations of life and liberally sprinkled with reference to cinema, literature, and art history. This exhibition will present a new sequence of large scale canvases, alongside the book cover that paintings for which he has become well known in recent years.

A new publication devoted to the book cover paintings will be published to celebrate the exhibition, featuring the artist’s commentaries on his works. A book launch to celebrate the publication’s release, including a signing and exhibition walk through with the artist will be held as an Edinburgh Art Festival event on Saturday 19th August at 3pm.

Cranston is a storyteller of sorts, without a clear story to tell. His work is seductive in terms of its use of narrative and humour, but it is the humour of Samuel Beckett or Buster Keaton, always touching on the strangeness and pathos of ordinary life. He draws on a variety of sources, in particular his own personal history; questioning the veracity of memory. This autobiographical activity is combined with passages culled from literature, anecdotes and jokes, second hand accounts, images from cinema and observations of life. Often working directly onto hardback book covers his work is not pre-conceived but emerges through the manipulation of materials – paint, varnish, collage – and the suggestions that this activity provokes, layering and re-working the images until something essential coalesces. As Liza Dimbleby has written in a recent essay “the images that are encouraged to surface are sometimes taboo; sex and solitude, death, nightmares – the ultimate questions, not without a sly humour.” Cranston was born in Hawick in 1969 and currently lives and works in Glasgow.

In 2018 Ingleby gallery exhibited Andrew Cranston's largest solo show to date; But the dream had no sound. The exhibition was accompanied by a 164pp publication, featuring an interview between the artist and his friend and colleague, painter Peter Doig. The book also includes over 60 illustrations - each with notes written by the artist - revealing the thoughts and associations that emerge in the process of making a painting.

Andrew Cranston
Never a joiner
17 June - 16 September