Walk the line
Like most of the portraits by one of Glasgow’s famous sons – artist, novelist and playwright Alasdair Gray – this pen drawing recalls the work of his hero William Blake. Its clean, delicate lines and mannered features suggest the gothic art Blake loved.
Back to the future
Its subject – a frequent model for the artist – is a 20th-century woman in shiny boots and patterned tights. Yet with her otherworldly gaze, Marion Oag could easily be a statue on a cathedral, as Gray marries old and new.
Guiding light
While Blake saw angels on street corners, Gray’s portrait gives us a goddess in a living room, Venus hovering in the background like his model’s guardian spirit. Behind her, an imaginary fusion of local waterscapes glints.
Ordinary to extraordinary
As with Lanark, Gray’s great experimental novel of 1981, his artworks transform his immediate surrounds into something fantastical – full of both personal and mythic symbolism. This little drawing, created in his former lodgings, packs a lot in.
Included in Drawn From Life: People On Paper, Kirkby Gallery, Knowsley, to 23 Oct
