Ken Currie - An Turas / The Crossing

Ken Currie

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For the Scottish football player, see Ken Currie (footballer).

Ken Currie
Born	March 9, 1960 (age 66) North Shields, North Tyneside, England, UK[1]
Education	Glasgow School of Art
Known for	Painting, Printmaking
Notable work	Three Oncologists, Portrait of Peter Higgs, Chimera

Ken Currie (born March 9, 1960, in North Shields, North Tyneside, England) is a Scottish artist known for figurative painting and portraits. In his early career in the 1980s, he was associated with the New Glasgow Boys group of artists. Currie was elected to the Royal Scottish Academy in 2024.

His work often deals with themes of class, illness, and decay. Currie says he wants his work to "hover in that area between beauty and horror". His work is in many major collections including the Tate, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Yale Center for British Art, and the New York Public Library.^[2][3]

Education & Works

Currie was born in England to Scottish parents and grew up in Barrhead, near the city of Glasgow.^[3] He started studying at the Glasgow School of Art in 1978 and graduated in 1983.^[4] In the late 1980s he was gaining attention as part of the New Glasgow Boys, a group of young Scottish figurative painters, including among others the artists Peter Howson, Adrian Wiszniewski and Steven Campbell.^[3]

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.^[5] Currie was involved with the Communist Party and describes his political views at the time as those of a "typical Scottish leftist".^[6]

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".^[7] 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.^[4][8]

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.^[2] He incorporated this in his art by depicting decaying and damaged bodies.^[1]

While many of his portraits are loosely based on his own face, Currie has completed portraits of notable people. His work Three Oncologists, completed in 2002, depicts three doctors working at the Ninewells Hospital in Dundee: Professor Robert J. C. Steele, Professor Sir Alfred Cuschieri and Professor Sir David P. Lane. Commissioned by the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, it is one of his most well-known paintings.^[3][5][2] In 2005 Currie was commissioned by the University of Edinburgh to paint a portrait of theoretical physicist Peter Higgs.^[4]

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.^[3]

In 2019 he revealed Unknown Man, a large-scale portrait of forensic anthropologist Dame Sue Black.^[9] 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.^[9][10] 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 that he later asked Professor Black to sit for the portrait.^[9]

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.^[11]

Currie was elected to the Royal Scottish Academy in 2024.^[12]

Themes and Influences

Chimera, 2010

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.^[3] In a 2021 interview with Tatler Asia, Currie says he wants his work "to hover in that [liminal zone] between beauty and horror".^[2]

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.^[2]

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.^[3]

Bibliography

Exhibition Catalogs

• Ken Currie: Animals [Catalogue of the exhibition held at Flowers 2008] London.
• Ken Currie: Immortality [Catalogue of the exhibition held at Flowers 2010] London.
• Ken Currie: Tragic Forms [Catalogue of the exhibition held at Flowers 2016] London.

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, ISBN 1901340007.
• Tom Normand, Ken Currie: Details of a Journey, Lund Humphries Publishers, 2002, ISBN 0853318360.
• Ken Currie, Ken Currie: Paintings and Writings, Luath Press, 2023 ISBN 9781804251270.

References

1.  "Ken Currie". National Galleries of Scotland. Retrieved 15 January 2025.
2.  Giles, Oliver (16 April 2021). "Scottish Artist Ken Currie On His First Solo Exhibition In Asia". Tatler Asia. Retrieved 15 January 2025.
3.  Mansfield, Susan (20 July 2013). "Interview: Ken Currie on 'the terror' of mortality". The Scotsman. Retrieved 14 January 2025.
4.  "Ken Currie". Flowers Gallery. Retrieved 14 January2025.
5.  McGinty, Stephen (14 July 2013). "New artists 'neglect' hard graft, says Ken Currie". The Scotsman. Retrieved 15 January2025.
6.  McAllister, David (11 March 2024). "Ken Currie: As an artist, it's not for me to proselytise". Prospect. Retrieved 15 January2025.
7.  "Friends set to bring city's Calton Weavers back to life". Glasgow Times. 17 May 2007. Retrieved 14 January 2025.
8.  "THE GLASGOW HISTORY MURAL". Media Matters. Archived from the original on 1 December 2010. Retrieved 14 January 2025.
9.  "The Modern Portrait Showcases New Ken Currie Painting". National Galleries of Scotland. 18 December 2023. Retrieved 15 January 2025.
10.  "BBC Radio 4 - The Anatomy Lesson". BBC. Retrieved 20 January 2026.
11.  "Ken Currie: Paintings and Writings". Flowers Gallery. Retrieved 15 January 2025.
12.  "The RSA welcomes four new Members". Royal Scottish Academy. 12 December 2024. Retrieved 4 May 2025.

External links

• Works in the National Galleries of Scotland
• Ken Currie's artist page on Flowers Gallery

Todays Thought

Nothing limits intelligence more than ignorance; nothing fosters ignorance more than one's own opinions; nothing strengthens opinions more than refusing to look at reality. 

-Sheri S. Tepper, novelist (16 Jul 1929-2016)

Kurt Vonnegut

“I work at home, and if I wanted to, I could have a computer right by my bed, and I’d never have to leave it. But I use a typewriter, and afterward I mark up the pages with a pencil. Then I call up this woman named Carol out in Woodstock and say, “Are you still doing typing?” Sure she is, and her husband is trying to track bluebirds out there and not having much luck, and so we chitchat back and forth, and I say, “Okay, I’ll send you the pages.”

Then I go down the steps and my wife calls, “Where are you going?” “Well,” I say, “I’m going to buy an envelope.” And she says, “You’re not a poor man. Why don’t you buy a thousand envelopes? They’ll deliver them, and you can put them in the closet.” And I say, “Hush.”

So I go to this newsstand across the street where they sell magazines and lottery tickets and stationery. I have to get in line because there are people buying candy and all that sort of thing, and I talk to them. The woman behind the counter has a jewel between her eyes, and when it’s my turn, I ask her if there have been any big winners lately.

I get my envelope and seal it up and go to the postal convenience center down the block at the corner of Forty-seventh Street and Second Avenue, where I’m secretly in love with the woman behind the counter. I keep absolutely poker-faced; I never let her know how I feel about her. One time I had my pocket picked in there and got to meet a cop and tell him about it.

Anyway, I address the envelope to Carol in Woodstock. I stamp the envelope and mail it in a mailbox in front of the post office, and I go home.

And I’ve had a hell of a good time. I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you any different.”

Todays Thought

The truth is that every morning war is declared afresh. And the men who wish to continue it are as guilty as the men who began it, more guilty perhaps, for the latter perhaps did not foresee all its horrors. 

-Marcel Proust, novelist (10 Jul 1871-1922)

Todays Word

somewhen

PRONUNCIATION:

(SUHM-(h)wen) 

MEANING:

adverb: At some indefinite or unspecified time; sometime.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Old English sum (some) + when, from Old English hwenne. Earliest documented use: 1297.

NOTES:

Somewhen is the ultimate excuse for procrastinators who refuse to be pinned down by the linear constraints of a clock. I told my editor I’d have the revised manuscript over to her somewhen. She told me she’d pay me somemoney.

USAGE:

“It is fun to know that serious scientists believe the fabulous alternate realities of the Philip Pullman novels could be accurate descriptions of reality (for in a multiverse of infinite size and scope there will, somewhere and somewhen, be a world where a little girl called Lyra befriends a talking polar bear and where people’s souls take the form of animal familiars).”
Michael Hanlon; Reality Check Required; New Scientist (London, UK); Feb 9, 2008.

Todays Thought

In order for me to write poetry that isn't political / I must listen to the birds / and in order to hear the birds / the warplanes must be silent. 

-Marwan Makhoul, poet (b. 2 Jul 1979)

Todays Thought

The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone. 

-Harriet Beecher Stowe, abolitionist and novelist (14 Jun 1811-1896)