Ken Currie

Ken Currie (born 1960 in North Shields, North Tyneside, England) is a Scottish painter working out of Glasgow. His paintings have been described as dark and violent.

Education & Works

Currie grew up in Barrhead. He started studying at the Glasgow School of Art in 1978 and graduated in 1983. In the late 1980s he was gaining attention as part of the "New Glasgow Boys", a group of young Scottish figurative painters, containing among others Peter Howson, Adrian Wiszniewski and Steven Campbell.

Throughout the 1980s, Currie's work depicted heroic workers and revolutionary union representatives as part of a bigger "socialist Clydeside". This is seen as a response to the policies of then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Currie was involved with the Communist Party and describes his political views at the time as those of a "typical Scottish leftist".

In 1987 Currie finished an eight-piece series of large-scale paintings of the massacre of the Calton weavers of 1787, which was the violent suppression of a strike by the British Army, resulting in " Scotland's first working-class martyrs". The paintings which were commissioned for the 200th anniversary of the massacre are now hanging on the ceiling of the People's Palace in Glasgow.

Starting with the early 1990s Currie began to be emotionally affected by the political and humanitarian crises in Eastern Europe, such as the Yugoslav Wars. He incorporated this in his art by depicting decaying and damaged bodies.

While a lot of his portraits are loosely based on his own face Currie has also been painting portraits of living people, such as the three doctors working at the Ninewells Hospital in Dundee who were the models for ''Three Oncologists'' in 2002, one of his most well-known paintings, a commission of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. In 2005 Currie was commissioned by the University of Edinburgh to paint a portraiture of theoretical physicist Peter Higgs.

In 2011 Currie unveiled ''Immortality'', a body of work consisting of paintings of the wealthy and famous. The title is an ironic nod at their inability to cheat death.

In 2019 he revealed ''Unknown Man'', a large-scale portrait of forensic anthropologist Dame Sue Black. The portrait is on long-term loan to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery and is displayed publicly.
The idea for the portrait came to fruition when Currie and Professor Black crossed paths during a BBC Radio 4 programme
The Anatomy Lesson
which featured discussion around the relationship between art and anatomy. Following on from this meeting, Currie was invited to Professor Black's workplace at the University of Dundee, where she gave him a tour of the dissection room. The artist was so moved by what he witnessed and encountered, he later asked Professor Black to sit for a portrait.

In 2023 Currie shared his studio journals with long-time collaborator and art historian Tom Normand. Normand compiled and edited the content of said journals, which resulted in ''Ken Currie: Paintings and Writings''.

Currie was elected to the Royal Scottish Academy in 2024.

Themes and Influences

Currie's paintings show a profound interest in the body (physical and metaphorical) and deeply explores the theme of mortality, which he called a "terror" later in his life. In a 2021 interview with Tatler Asia Currie says he wants his work "to hover in that iminal zonebetween beauty and horror".

A lot of Currie's work features subjects in front of inky, dark backgrounds. This stylistic element has developed while he was studying surgeons and experienced the darkness and spotlight of an operating theater. Currie himself says he wants to depict "something emerging out of darkness" and admits that it has a "theatrical element" to it.

In a 2013 interview, Currie named figurative painter Francis Bacon as his "idol". In the same interview he says he "worships" 17th century Spanish painter Diego Velázquez.

Bibliography

Exhibition Catalogs
*''Ken Currie: Animals'' atalogue of the exhibition held at Flowers 2008London.
*''Ken Currie: Immortality'' atalogue of the exhibition held at Flowers 2010London.
*''Ken Currie: Tragic Forms'' atalogue of the exhibition held at Flowers 2016London.

Monographs
* J. Harrison and G. Topp, ''Ken Currie: The Fourth Triptych and Other Works'' Cleveland County Council, 1995.
* Ken Currie, ''Ken Currie: Painting & Sculpture'', 1995–96, Panart Publishing Limited, 1996, .
* Tom Normand, ''Ken Currie: Details of a Journey'', Lund Humphries Publishers, 2002, .
* Ken Currie, ''Ken Currie: Paintings and Writings'', Luath Press, 2023 .

References

External links

Works in the National Galleries of Scotland

Ken Currie's artist page on Flowers Gallery
* : works by Ken Currie in British public collections

{{DEFAULTSORT:Currie, Ken
1960 births
Living people
People from North Shields
Alumni of the Glasgow School of Art
20th-century Scottish painters
Scottish male painters
21st-century Scottish painters
21st-century Scottish male artists
20th-century Scottish male artists
Royal Scottish Academicians