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Billy Connolly
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1 Self Portrait With High Horse Giclée edition of 95 Image 16" x 22" Framed £625 3 And On Monday, God Made TheWorld Giclée edition of 95 Image 16" x 22" Framed £625
2 Glaswegian Icarus Giclée edition of 95 Image 16" x 22" Framed £625 4 Two For The Road Giclée edition of 95 Image 22" x 16" Framed £625
“I still think of it as a luxury, really. It’s likemeditation. Sometimes I’ll be out or doing something, and then I think, ‘I’ll go and have a drawnow’. I like the isolation… of being alone, on a page.”
the new collection nevertheless evokes a suggestion of folk tales and fable. It’s surely no coinci- dence that half of this collection was created whilst on location in New Zealand, filming The Hobbit, in which Connolly stars as Dáin Ironfoot. Glaswegian Icarus sees a squat, muscular, slightly raffish figure, dwarfed by elaborate feathered wings, seemingly ready for flight. Two For The Road is melancholically companionable – a tall figure with his banjo strapped across his body, his smaller companion standing by patiently, a piece that “puts me in mind of Gerry Rafferty,” says Connolly. Fly Away Peter hints at the surreal, with the relaxed subject providing a perch for a number of characterful birds. Even if it is the meditative inspiration that comes from the aloneness on the page that Connolly describes — rather than stories — behind his work, the simplicity and human- ity of the collection certainly
encourage the beholder towards the escapism and fantasy of childhood. We talk about his style and how it has evolved. It comes as little surprise that Connolly lacks any pretension about his technique, and clearly enjoys the potential for provocation in his very basic approach. He still uses ordinary felt-tipped pens and pencils – the same tools he picked up five years ago on a rainy day in Montreal, when he first started to draw. “To be
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SPRING 2013 FINE ART COLLECTOR
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