KEN CURRIE (SCOTTISH 1960-)
MAN WITH TATTOOS - 1987
Signed lower right, signed and inscribed with title and dated 1987 verso, conte, pencil and pastel on paper
84cm x 58cm (33in x 23in)
Exhibited: ‘The Vigorous Imagination’, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, 1987; ‘The Vigorous Imagination Then & Now’, The Fine Art Society, 2017
Born in 1960, Ken Currie graduated from the Glasgow School of Art in 1983. His work is typically dark and confrontational. Currie is highly aware of and influenced by the tradition of Western art, drawing inspiration from a variety of artists including Goya and Velazquez. Similarly to Francis Bacon, he is fascinated by the human face as a mechanism of expressing trauma, pain, and powerful psychological expression. His early work is heavily inspired by his childhood in Glasgow’s declining industrial landscape; observational of the different character architypes that were beginning to vanish, and politically critical of the Thatcherite policies which saw the city decay. This early imagery is unflinching and, like Howson, skirts the grotesque, yet it is also multilayered, even romanticised.