The Return of James Francis Gill
Counting Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Robert Indiana amongst his peers, Pop Art pioneer James Francis Gill took the art world by storm in the 1960s. Now he’s back to reclaim his rightful place. From a stint in the United States Marine Corps to breakfast with John Wayne, James’ life has been as colourful as his art. Celebrated for his montage effects, he captures the American Dream through intimate portraits of stars like Marilyn Monroe, Bob Dylan and Grace Kelly. Lauded by publications like Life and The New York Times, he nevertheless chose to go into self-imposed exile in 1972 to develop his artistic expression. Following his spectacular return to the UK in 2019, it is our honour to introduce you to his visionary collection. Ahead of his October 2019 tour, we caught up with James to find out how he prepared for his appearances at our Glasgow and Covent Garden galleries. How do you feel about your second visit to Castle Fine Art? I’m excited about following up on everything we started the first time. The first shows were very exciting, people were great and I had an amazing time. I’m also looking forward to being in Scotland, where my ancestors originated from. So you’re excited to visit Glasgow? Yes! I have been watching documentaries about
England and Scotland, so I am familiarising myself with the country and its history. I was wondering what a Scottish man would look like in cowboy boots (just kidding). I have a coat of arms that is registered in Scotland and I want to get to know more about my ancestors, plus see the lovely countryside. What can we expect from your new work on your mini-tour? I’ve done some new paintings, which I think turned out pretty well. I also created some smaller paintings as studies for larger works I’d like to do in the future. There’s also a follow-up to your popular Beatles piece. What is it about the band that inspires you? Everything changed with the Beatles. They are one of the biggest things in music – second only to ‘the King’, Elvis Presley. I tried to capture the feeling of their music. We understand you’re creating a collector’s edition featuring some of your most famous artworks (which currently hang in prestigious museums and art galleries). How do you feel about this? It’s pretty exciting to see the images again after all this time. These are the paintings I created at the start of my career. The idea is that at my age it’s nice to revisit my early works from the 1960s. In fact, for some of the studies I did recently, I named them ‘Back to the Future’, because I was going back to what I did then and projecting the concept onto new paintings.
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