Eric Cruikshank

Artist website:


Taking landscape as an initial starting point, my paintings are not about literal presentation; instead the focus is on the emotive qualities of place. Using an objective palette tied to the Scottish landscape, colour acts as a vehicle to reveal the picture planes underlying points of reference. With the structure, design, and colour harmony being grounded in the everyday, the viewer is encouraged to readdress notions of their surroundings, where the familiar is opened up and made full of possibility.

With the works coming out of the territory of traditional art and values, through process and presentation, a dialogue opens up between the past and present, the historical and the contemporary. Despite an allusion to the social, spiritual and material contexts within the field of my art, the principal criteria always come back to the base construct elements. Shape, colour, and surface build the foundational support and elevate the works concepts, allowing the viewer to uncover layers of potential meaning as each element is considered. In the absence of imagery or narrative, the panels are left open to interpretation, as an almost blank plane to reflect the viewers own emotions and ideas.

By applying the paint ...

1993 - 1997
BA (Hons) Painting and Drawing, Edinburgh College of Art.

Selected Solo and Joint Exhibitions
2019
Reductive in Nature, Schacky Art & Advisory, Dusseldorf.
A Stillness that Contains Movement, The Briggait, Glasgow.
2018
Paper Skies, Holly Johnson Gallery, Dallas.
2017
Clear Light Day - Soft Dark Night, DAS ESSZIMMER, Bonn.
The Relative Medium (with Michael Craik), Galleri Konstepidemin, Gothenburg.
Trace, Press Bleed, Bend (with Laura Campbell) Patriothall Gallery, Edinburgh.
2016
Continuum (with Ian Kane), RAUMX, London.
Repetition Takes Form, AIS Gallery, Shibukawa.
2015
Ways of Seeing (with Michael Craik), Howden Park Gallery Livingston.
Plus Minus Repeat, Sleeper Gallery, Edinburgh.
2013
Malerei (with Michael Craik), Galerie Albrecht, Berlin.
Colour as Subject, Patriothall Gallery, Edinburgh.
2012
The Solo Project – Basel with Galerie Albrecht.
2010
When I Was Small I Didn't Work Big, Galerie Albrecht, Berlin.
Dalcross Project Space (with Ian Kane), Dalcross, Inverness shire.
The Colour of Home, Gebert Contemporary, Santa Fe.
Moments of Absence, Limousine Bull, Aberdeen.
En Forme (with Cecilia Vissers), ParisCONCRET, Paris.
2009
Colour Light Space, Highland Institute for Contemporary Art, Inverness-shire.

Selected Group Exhibitions and Fairs
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