Ken Currie Paintings and Writings sampler

Ken Currie studied at the Glasgow School of Art from 1978–1983
and rose to attention within a generation of painters known as the
‘New Glasgow Boys’ in the 1980s. He is renowned for his unsettling
portrayal of the human figure. The artist’s rich, luminous paintings
depict mysterious rites, rituals, and quasi-medical practices, offering
a meditation on violence in its many guises. Ken Currie has exhibited
widely internationally, including a 2013 solo exhibition at the
Scottish National Portrait Gallery which also commissioned his
painting Three Oncologists. Currie’s work is held in many major
public collections including Tate, London; Scottish National Gallery
of Modern Art, Edinburgh; New York Public Library; Imperial War

Museum, London; Campbelltown Arts Centre, New South Wales;
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven; Gulbenkian Foundation,
Lisbon; and the British Council, London.
dr Tom Normand is an art historian specialising in British, and
especially Scottish art, photography and culture. He is the author of
several books including Ken Currie: Details of a Journey, London,
2002; and Scottish Photography: a history, Edinburgh, 2007. He
has also authored numerous academic articles, critical essays and
artist’s catalogues. Tom is an Honorary member of the Royal Scottish
Academy of Art and an Honorary Research Fellow in the School of
Art History, University of St Andrews.

Ken Currie
Paintings and Writings
Compiled and edited by
TOM NORMAND

First published 2023
isbn 978-1-80425-126-3 standard edition
isbn 978-1-80425-127-0 limited edition
The author’s right to be identified as author of this book
under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 has been asserted.
The paper used in this book is recyclable and made from low chlorine pulps.
Printed and bound by
Gutenberg Press Ltd., Malta
Typeset in 11 point Sabon LT Pro by
Main Point Books, Edinburgh
© Ken Currie 2023
© Tom Normand 2023

For Alex and Ina Currie

Contents
Introduction by Tom Normand 9
Part 1 1980–1989 18
Part 2 1990–1999 56
Part 3 2000–2009 102
Part 4 2010–2022 150
Afterword by Ken Currie 227
List of Artworks 230
Selected Bibliography 235
Note on Photography 239

Introduction
You must be in the wildness of the midnight masque, in the
misery of the dark street at dawn, on the moor with the
wanderer or the robber…
John Ruskin, Modern Painters, Appendix, vol. 2, 1846
Reflecting on Ken Currie’s writings, in association with his
paintings, the place to begin is with the artist in his studio.
In the case of Currie this is a large rectangular space with a high
ceiling. It is part of a repurposed factory building. The walls are
painted white. There is a light-source from above, but the principal
lighting is from electric strip lamps. The vast bulk of the studio
is set over to an area for painting and here canvases, large and
small, will be set with their painted surface facing the wall. On the
furthest gable a single painting will stand confronting the artist.
This will be his work, his challenge, for the days and weeks ahead.
On the opposite gable, which contains the doorway into the studio,
an attenuated space is set aside. Here his paints and brushes
are assembled alongside related paraphernalia: glazes and solvents,
cleaning materials, a basin, stepladders, a single chair. The space
between the painting floor and this more utilitarian area is demarcated
by a long metal desk. This is adjoined by a bookcase. In this
area there are smaller works, sketch books, reference materials
and reams of paper.
This last, the writing paper, has long been at the heart of Currie’s
creative practice. In the periods when he steps away from the
exhausting concentration on painting, he will gather his thoughts
and write. Most often he will claim that this is a simple distraction,
a diversion that occurs while he ‘watches paint dry’ and prepares
9

Ken Currie
for the next contest with the image. But the practice of writing
has been a constant in his long career as an artist. As an intimate
part of his creativity, it is the necessary analogue to his vision.
Currie’s writing, like his painting, is cast inside the studio space.
It would not be too much of an exaggeration to recognise the studio
as a kind of ‘sacred’ space. Here, the very essence of his being is
allowed its fullest expression. In the first instance this is manifest as
labour, a singular dedication to the work ethic, to the act of painting.
This labour is certainly physical, but also emotional, psychological
and intellectual. Nor are these component parts separate, for they
overlap and interrelate in a dynamic synergy. The ‘work’ of painting
is an engagement with the body in its capacity for visceral creative
energy, but also with the mind and its need to organise, shape,
control and understand. The studio is the arena in which these
forces unwind.
Given the level of this commitment to studio practice it is
unsurprising that few visitors are invited into this sanctum. Only
when Currie is exhibiting his work in the public realm does the
necessity for interviews and publicity photographs impinge upon his
private space. At these points Currie will pose, as requested, and will
provide copy for newspaper and journal articles. Here, he will most
often speak ‘around’ the work, providing a broad context for his
unsettling imagery. Faced with demands to ‘explain’ the paintings,
he will offer parallels with the works of other artists, most of these
being historical figures, and also remarks concerning the condition
of the modern world. These, it might be said, are less explanations
than evasions. But such statements often hint at the deeper realms
of his thought-world. This subterranean territory of imagination
and apparition is sometimes glimpsed in his public discourse but
is more fully realised in his private writings and speculations.
There is a paradox here, for it is a fundamental tenet of Currie’s
commitment as an artist that the visual image has no equivalent,
nor even a parallel, in language. The visual image may be seen, and
it may certainly be experienced, but it cannot be ‘known’. That
10

introduction – tom normand
is to say, it cannot be reduced into words or resolved as concept.
In fact, its ‘meaning’ always remains opaque. The painted image
is inviolable.
Extraordinary, then, that Currie has kept a studio journal since
his student days in the early 1980s.
It is possible to speculate upon the motives for this discreet
writing activity. In some ways it is a reaction to the frustrations and
irritations of social discourse. As a young man Currie’s engagement in
the cultural and political world involved him in various highly public
debates concerning the role and purpose of art. Currie consistently
moved towards a sense of art’s social role and even its moral duty.
In taking this stand he became embroiled in impassioned, and
often strident, discussions that were all-consuming. In some sense
this compromised his creative work. The nuance of his art was
impaired by the tendency to view his outlook as one-dimensional
and dogmatic. In which case, the ‘retreat’ to the studio journal
allowed him to circumvent the ‘noise of the world’ and so discover
the fullest potential of his developing aesthetic.
A further motivation, perhaps related to the above, was
surely a desire to resolve, inside his head, the shifting mores of
contemporary culture. In a political world that was increasingly
fragmented, and in a cultural landscape that acknowledged and
embraced a philosophical relativism, Currie was searching for a
position that he could regard as authentic to himself as a creative
artist. At some level this involved a reassertion of the eternal verities
of the visual arts. This was not so much a formalism, though it
contained elements of this commitment, but a notion that the
visual image was, historically, ‘detached’; its power was unique
and unclassifiable. In this sense at least, he became committed
to the idea of the painted image as a subtle, and even terrifying,
revelation. The journal became the forum for this realisation.
Of course, the studio journal was merely the written testament to
Currie’s developing aesthetic. It existed in congruence, perhaps just
following behind, the evolution of his painting. As such, it fulfilled
11

Ken Currie
the function of allowing him to understand the shifting paradigm
of his own art. The arc of these complicated changes spread from
an existentialist theatricality to a socialist realism, on to a quasiabstraction,
and yet further to a figurative minimalism that expanded
into a near metaphysical psychodrama of the human heart.
This trajectory also helps explain a final motivation for the studio
journal. It seems that Currie longs to understand, for himself, the
motivation that drives his art towards extremes. This has often been
an element in the commentary on his painting; that it is ‘disturbing’,
it is ‘raw’, it is simply too dark and harrowing. Currie returns to
this throughout the journal citing, as exemplars and witnesses, the
models of Bosch and Bruegel, David and Goya, Beckmann and
Dix and Francis Bacon. But, more than this, he looks inward to
ask himself why this imagery haunts his imagination. Often, he
will recount the perfidy of those in power, the betrayal of truly
human aspirations, the ruthless exploitation of subject peoples, the
myriad destructive impulses of humanity and even the self-serving
opportunism of the cultural nexus. However, fundamentally, he
will return to the philosophical concept of Realism. This grotesque
travesty in human life is what he ‘sees’, this vision is an abiding
primordial truth.
***
The studio journal is not the whole of Ken Currie’s writings, nor
even the largest part. These essays are accompanied by articles
written for publication, interviews that are sometimes verbatim
(though more often, scripted) and a singular group of letters.
In explaining the inclusion of this last it is appropriate to
examine the genesis of this publication.
For a number of years, decades even, Currie and the editor of
this book have corresponded. Firstly in the form of letters and
latterly through the medium of emails, these letters were most
usually concerned with personal issues. However, they would often
12

introduction – tom normand
expand into reflections on Currie’s art and on the art-world more
generally. Sometimes they would touch upon layers of substance
and meaning in Currie’s work and so functioned, like his ongoing
journal, to articulate his developing thought-world.
With the advent of digital technology, these written documents
continued as email correspondence but remained in character as a
private conversation. Indeed, though often quite formal they could
on occasion lapse into a more ribald dialogue. Fundamentally,
however, they were never meant for publication.
Things changed in 2020. With the advent of the pandemic and
the related condition of ‘lockdown’ the mails became more frequent.
More than this, they became more confessional and intimate. At
some point they emerged as long biographical exposures and
disclosures, on both sides. The exchanges reflected upon personal
background and growth, on childhood and adolescence, on parents
and parenting, on early adult life and the uneven passages of
personal progression. They were, in truth, an exploration of
memory and so a mutual reconciliation with the past.
From Currie these tales spoke of his links to his early life in
the town of Barrhead and his long association with the city of
Glasgow. He also spoke of his becoming as an artist and the fevered
atmosphere of Glasgow School of Art in the 1980s. His subsequent
international recognition and the journey into ‘mid-career’
he explored with some irony and even disquiet. And, often, he
spoke of his concerns as an artist, including his anxieties relating
to his own art.
At some point in these deliberations, he confessed the existence
of the studio journal, in truth a series of studio journals.
The prospect of these private writings was irresistible to the
historian in Currie’s co-respondent, and he agreed to release them
for study. The journal covered a substantial period of time and
reflected upon every aspect of art and culture, not to say politics
and society. The entries were curiously formal, written in a careful,
thoughtful manner and only occasionally revealing hostility and
13

Ken Currie
anger. They were eminently publishable as significant examples
of ‘artist’s writings’.
***
Of course, the journal entries require a fuller exposition and the
associations to Currie’s published articles, interviews and private
mails allowed for the greatest insight into his thinking as an artist.
Moreover, when allied to his painting these offer some associations
that throw light upon the enigma of his imagery. In fact, the arc
of these writings, taken together, present a kind of monograph on
the artist. This monograph is a history written from the ‘inside’.
It acknowledges the assertive and driven nature of the artist as a
young man: committed to a socialist art and engaged in a public
discourse concerning the nature of a politicised realism. It explores
the contradictions in this position, and reveals the doubt cast on a
reductive realism. It examines the routes taken to refine his vision
and so moving towards a more nuanced sense of a philosophical
position on the nature of ‘being’. It recognises his extension of this
into an uncompromising vision, at once dislocating and disquieting.
In all, this is the story of a contemporary painter, simultaneously
in the centre of the artworld yet still inhabiting its edges. A modern
painter who eschews the fashionable and embraces the wildness
of a terrifying reality.
14

introduction – tom normand
The astonishing thing, here, is Currie’s decision to stand naked
in front of his audience. As an artist he has consistently offered
up challenging works and demanded that the audience interpret
them as they will. He has often remarked that he, himself, has no
idea what motivates his painting nor what determines his imagery.
The revelation of this content, within his writings, will, at least
partially, offer some resolution to the enigma of his work.
Unfamiliar Reflection, 2006
15

Part 1
Ken Currie, Paintings and Writings 1980–1989

Life of the Organism, 1980
As a student in the painting department of Glasgow School of
Art in the late 1970s and early ’80s I was, like everyone else,
deeply affected by the atmosphere that hung over the painting
studios. At this time, this atmosphere was steeped in what seemed
like the monolithic precepts of 20th century Scottish painting:
the centrality of the Royal Scottish Academy with its moribund
traditions; the east coast, west coast schism which spawned a
stifling provincialism; and the general myopia of ambition
among the students. In 1980 I found myself wrapped up in these
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Paintings and Writings 1980–1989
concerns and intent on producing traditional Glasgow School of
Art painting. Yet outwith the hours of the School I maintained
an interest in figuration that was not satisfied by the course
structure of the time. In pursuing this interest I photographed
friends modelling in a variety of poses, usually semi-naked and
lit with a single source of artificial light. This provided valuable
material for figure compositions that could not be supplied by the
painting school. It was here that I gained an extremely basic but
functioning working knowledge of the human figure composition
without having to worry about the life-class, as it was here that
the peculiarly stifling atmosphere of the painting school seemed to
weigh most heavily. I had been looking at Francis Bacon’s work
and through him Eadweard Muybridge’s photographs of ‘The
Human Figure in Motion’.
Through Muybridge I developed an interest not only in human
figures but also animals in motion and found accompanying source
material in nature photography, particularly scenes of predation.
My concern then was physicality, muscle, motion and a sense
of violence. Clearly I was fumbling for a theme, but feelings of
brutality and oppression were what I wanted to express through
the images, and what was important then was the fact that I
couldn’t do this by purely abstract means.
In the summer recess of 1980, it was my intention to explore
some of the themes that I had encountered in the novels of Kafka,
Beckett and Sartre in a series of big charcoal drawings of figures
in a variety of urban and industrial interiors. These drawings
formed the basis of my third-year work. The final piece was called
Life of the Organism, a title shamelessly plagiarised from Dušan
Makevejev’s WR Mysteries of the Organism.
Mortality, physical extremes and isolation were the themes that
interested me then although, in retrospect, they were clearly part of
a process of growing self-awareness rather than coherent statements.
‘Statement on the Development of my Work 1980–1988’, Ken Currie, Third Eye Centre, Glasgow
and Raab Gallery, Berlin, 1988.
19

Part 2
Ken Currie, Paintings and Writings 1990–1999

Ken Currie
Wailing Women, 1990
It has been my experience, so far, that the notion of artists delving
into the darker areas of human life is often met with disapproval
in our present-day culture of contentment. Artists who explore the
darker, more troubling aspects of the human situation, particularly
painters, are said to produce work which is ‘depressing’ or ‘difficult
to live with’. One can only assume that people who find this kind of
work difficult or depressing must approach it wrapped in a feeling
of personal contentment and self-satisfaction. Given that we should
all be conscientiously concerned with the state of the world, and that
this concern should pervade our every thought, word and deed, I can
only assume that people such as this are either deluding themselves
or seeking a kind of art that mirrors their own complacency.
Goya is, therefore, of vital importance as an example of an artist
who declared war on complacency and self-delusion, and whose
work is a monumental argument for the notion of an art that is not
afraid to probe and confront the darker forces at work in the world.
Above all, he was a moral artist dedicated to Truth and Reason.
His exposure of humankind’s self-destructive follies was not born
out of misanthropy or irrational despair but of the need to wake
people out of their contented sleep. His work is imbued with a
fierce rational pessimism and condemnation of man’s folly… the
main driving force behind his work, therefore, is rage and despair.
At the moment I feel it is impossible to look at this series (‘The
Disasters of War’) without immediately thinking of the civil war
in Bosnia. In fact, ‘The Disasters of War’ could easily be about
that conflict – the betrayal of truth and reason, the triumph of
barbarism and intolerance, the unleashing of atavistic forces intent
on revenge, reprisal, endless killing. The terrible lust with which
this killing is carried out, revealing not only the urge to wantonly
murder but to mutilate and disfigure, even the dead.
‘Uncivil Wars: Ken Currie applauds Goya’s courageous images of human depravity’, Art Review,
March 1994.
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Paintings and Writings 1990–1999
57

Ken Currie
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Paintings and Writings 1990–1999
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Ken Currie
The Fourth Triptych: Enemy of the People, The Sceptics,
Anatomy Lesson, The Idealist, 1989–90
(pages 58–59)
Recent events in Eastern Europe, and elsewhere, have undoubtedly
influenced the direction of the new work. In fact, the period of the
1989 ‘revolutions’, the ‘End of History’, the ‘Death of Communism’
and the ‘Triumph of Capitalism’, provoked a kind of philosophical
crisis which I’m sure I shared with many other people. A feeling that
the whole basis of one’s belief lay in ruins, politically discredited
and morally indefensible.
At the beginning of 1990 in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin I stood
in front of Bruegel’s Netherlandish Proverbs of 1559, with the
sound of the Mauerspechte, or ‘wall-peckers’ chipping away at the
wall, still ringing in my ears. Here, Bruegel had depicted the world
as a kind of theatre where human beings pursued the grand follies
of their existence. The proverbs depicted seemed to have a curious
timelessness and their observations as relevant now as they were then.
In other words, Bruegel seemed to be presenting an almost absurdly
pessimistic view of the human situation – that human beings are
enslaved by their nature, incapable of acting out of anything other
than self-interest. That human beings are fundamentally incapable
of realising their collective ideals. At an earlier moment I would have
dismissed this thinking as reactionary and politically naïve. However
at that moment, in Berlin… Breugel’s vision had a kind of resonance
as a counter-attack on the fatuous optimism and bland historical
certainty that had been one of Eastern Europe’s most irritating flaws.
I raise these points in order to illustrate the kind of political
anxieties, questions and contradictions against which my new
work has developed, and which have a direct bearing on the kind
of imagery I’ve chosen to present, even right down to the way in
which I apply the paint.
‘A discussion between Ken Currie and John Griffiths’, catalogue, Riverside Studios exhibition,
London, 1991.
60

Part 3
Ken Currie, Paintings and Writings 2000–2009

Ken Currie
Details of a Journey II, 2000
I’m very often reminded of the last words in the last book of
Samuel Beckett’s great ‘Trilogy’ – ‘I can’t go on. I’ll go on.’
‘Interview with the Artist’, Susannah Thompson, Ken Currie: Recent Work, exhibition catalogue,
Glasgow School of Art, 2002.
102

Safe Hands, 2000
Physical and mental energy – the process of painting often places
a great strain on your reserves, your stamina. Painting is mostly
a physical battle with the work in front of you. You realise your
‘vision’, if you like, through a psycho-physiological process, in
a state of perpetual possibility, infinite malleability. And I’m
not talking about huge canvases here, really small paintings can
have beads of sweat breaking out as you try to make this little
thing work. It’s hard work. You have to concentrate and at the
same time lose yourself to possibility. You’re trying to create this
heightened, unfolding moment of pure creativity where you are
in total control but not really conscious of what you are doing.
‘Interview with the Artist’, Susannah Thompson, Ken Currie: Recent Work, exhibition catalogue,
Glasgow School of Art, 2002.
103

Part 4
Ken Currie, Paintings and Writings 2010–2022

Ken Currie
Heavily Symbolic Still Life, 2009
The human figure, heads, sometimes animals, have always been
central concerns of my work. Looking back over the years there
are certain works where there is an absence of the figure; shrouds,
monuments, architectural spaces, and ordinary objects. But I have
never consciously explored the idea of the still life painting.
On regular visits to the Burrell Collection in Glasgow I was
always drawn to a very small, very modest, very quiet painting by
the 18th century French master Jean Siméon Chardin. It depicts an
arrangement of rather humble everyday objects on a dusty shelf.
Painted exquisitely, the simple objects are charged with mystery
and an almost spiritual intensity. It struck me that still life painting
is capable of conveying a weight of subtle meanings and allusions.
Towards the end of 2008 I suddenly began a still life series. I
think I was sick of reading the newspapers. Page after page about
greed and stupidity on a colossal scale. I had to disengage, retreat.
Once I started all sorts of possibilities emerged.
These paintings are objects mostly found around my studio and
in my home. They have a certain significance for me.
I set up some of these objects in a still life context, on a table
and side-lit against a dark background.
Some of the objects refer to memory. Also, the idea of frugality,
of economy, of a stripping away to basics. Certain memories of
childhood.
Interesting how certain objects, when brought together, can
have such heavy symbolism – like skulls and candles. Certain
objects seem to have an innately ominous quality.
Towards the end of the series it occurred to me that I wasn’t
making ‘proper’ still life paintings, like Chardin, as the paintings
were mostly of single objects, sometimes two objects. So, I set up
a large still life, taking all the objects I had looked at previously
and brought them together. It was as if they were having a meeting,
or a conversation with each other. In this large painting I became
150

interested in the range of possible meanings in the objects but
recognised that these meanings would be wholly allusive. In so
doing I hoped I just might slightly brush the coat-tails of Chardin.
‘Draft notes on New Paintings’, Email to TN, 24 January 2010.
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