Artist Duncan Shanks launches new book.

THERE'S not an inch of the Clyde Valley that artist Duncan Shanks doesn't know like the back of his hand.

For decades Duncan, one of Scotland's finest landscape painters, has depicted the area's waterfalls and glens in a long series of brilliant paintings.

But because he is publicity-shy, and wary of the social demands that come from being involved in the art world and all its trappings, his profile is not as high as it should be.

All of that looks likely to change, however, with a new exhibition that opens in Glasgow on March 14. An authoritative new book is being published at the same time.

His entire collection of 106 sketchbooks from the last 55 years, containing some 6,500 drawings and gifted to Glasgow University's Hunterian Art Gallery, will go on show there.

The book, The Poetry of Place contains dozens of his sketches, their subjects ranging from Davingill burn in spate to 'Carmichael Road, Tinto, morning' is being published at the same time.

The exhibition and the book both involve Anne Dulau Beveridge, curator of pre-1945 French and British Art at The Hunterian since 1997.

She has come to know Duncan well since 2008, when contact was first made with him to discuss the possible gift of his sketchbooks.

"What Duncan has said to me, again and again," says Beveridge, "is the fact that he works for himself. He was determined to find a new way of looking at landscape. He didn't want to do what had already been done by others.

"He has great facility as a draughtsman and a very good eye. He is very good at quickly capturing what catches his eye. But he isn't interested in the commercial aspect of the art world."

See original here:
Artist Duncan Shanks launches new book.