Robert McGilvray

Robert McGilvray

This body of work continues to explore and expand on recent themes of abstraction which are rooted in the reality of landscape and are personal responses to a sense of place and the memory of experience. I explore the light and the dark, the fine and fragile balance between pessimism and optimism, the uncertainty in the mists. Perhaps it is an unconscious statement of our times: dark and threatening and eerily uncertain, but always countered by a passage of light, sometimes only minimal, but, nevertheless, offering a bit of distant hope. To quote Leonard Cohen: “There is a crack in everything...that’s how the light gets in”.  Some of the work is dominated by strong, dense black silhouettes representative of anonymous islands and contrasted against a background of the glowing light of sky and sea. Other works seem to be attempting a complete change and offer a polarimetry, being composed of close toned warmth and ethereal colour. These two opposing statements also reflect a recurrent theme: the dark and rugged landscape of the west and the flat, light typography of the east.

Robert McGilvray was born in Glasgow in 1952. He studied at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, graduating in 1975. He was then employed as a part time lecturer until 2014. Over a 40 year career he taught in many departments including Design, Architecture, Town Planning and the School of Fine Art. He is also founder and administrator of many public arts programs and a co-founder of Seagate Gallery and Dundee Printmakers Workshop.