Alexander Millar
he Springside born artist with a worldwide reputation amongst collectors is making an emotional return to his Scottish roots this year. His contribution to ‘Homecoming Scotland 2014’ is a four month exhibition opening at the Scotland Street School Museum, housed in one of Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s iconic buildings, is a project to which he has dedicated the last year in preparation. “I could not consider exhibiting anything less than my best work in Glasgow. I take great pride in my Scottish heritage, and viewmy Homecoming collection as a rite of passage in my career,” says a proud Millar. A celebration of the working men and women of industrial Glasgow and the North, the exhibition features more than thirty unseen original oil paintings and charcoal drawings. All the paintings are informed by Millar’s experiences of growing up in a working class family, surrounded by the archetypal ‘working man’ - those men who went out to the mines and the shipyards early (as seen in ‘The Dawn Chorus’ ) and returned tired and exhausted at ‘Exodus’ time with hunched shoulders, identical cloth caps and a roll up. “My earliest memories were of my time spent in the company of old men dressed in dark suits, smoking woodbines and large missile-shaped women decked out in big overcoats, pinnies, tartan headscarves and zipped booties” says Millar. Fascinated by the close observation of working people’s daily routines, he says that as a child it was like a ‘choreographed street ballet’ performed daily on his street by people going about their lives in an industrial, but sometimes strangely beautiful and evocative landscape, and he freely admits those childhood memories have »
TheExodus Canvaseditionof95 ImageSize18"x24" FramedSize251/2"x311/2" Framed£595
AUTUMN2014 FIN e ARTC o LL e CT o R 57
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