ALAN DAVIE
A COLOURFUL HISTORY Celebrating his 90th birthday this year, cherished Scottish artist Alan Davie is being honoured by a series of exhibitions and events in his native Falkirk. Paul Dale speaks to him
I n September this year Scottish painter and musician Alan Davie will be 90 years old. Arguably Scotland’s greatest living artist, Davie is the forefather of that most self- effacing and denialist of movements, the Scottish beats. From Davie a line of nationalist abstraction and dissent can be traced through the work of Alasdair Gray, John Bellany, Craigie Aitchison, Christopher Wood and
Lorraine G Huber. Not that Davie would ever recognise such art history heresy. ‘I’ve always seen myself as being a complete outsider. I’ve never been part of a group or movement,’ he says. It’s a rare privilege having Davie stop work to answer my questions. The project he’s promoting, and part of the reason he’s so busy, is Falkirk council’s Alan Davie at 90
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showcase, a celebration of Davie’s escalation to four score years and ten through a series of exhibitions, workshops, talks and gigs. Though his formative years were spent at Edinburgh College of Art, Davie was born and grew up in Grangemouth. Is it important to him to be celebrated in and around his birthplace?
‘Well, naturally Falkirk is very important to me and it is very nice to show in my hometown. I expect it has changed quite dramatically. As a boy I used to enjoy roller- skating and cycling around the town. Only two people owned cars in my street and passing cars very rarely disturbed me when I was out practising cycling backwards tricks. I was surprised and delighted to learn that Falkirk Council owns paintings by my father, who was the art teacher at the local high school.’ Since 1954 Davie has lived near Hertford Heath, in rural Hertfordshire, keeping a studio in a converted stable block. His wife, Bili, died two years ago. Alone, and still cultivating both a formidable beard (he looks like a suburban Gandalf), and an astounding body of work, it feels as though it would take a magical force to come between the man and his work. ‘It just comes naturally to me; it is something I have to do, like a compulsion; it never stops. My ideas and forms come intuitively; even when I am watching the television I am making sketches and small drawings. I seem to be driven by an intense inner urge to create.’ Some years ago, Davie decided to broaden his creative horizons by working more in textiles, a move later echoed by Tracy Emin, among others, albeit with more political intent. Davie is still dismissive of the relevance of this direction. ‘Working with textiles and making the carpets is just something that happened. I was commissioned to design some rugs and then I got interested in the process. In fact, my wife and daughter got very involved in the process and we made carpets together. They wove the carpets to my designs, so it is something that we became interested in together and that we shared.’
Like his heroes Paul Klee, Jackson Pollock and Joan Miró, Davie has always drawn inspiration from music, jazz in particular, and is himself an accomplished piano, cello and bass clarinet player. He gets positively rheumy-eyed recalling the roots of his passion. ‘My interest in jazz started when I was at art college in Edinburgh in the late 1930s. I saw the American saxophonist Colman Hawkins give a recital with a group of Scottish musicians and he just bowled me over. Hawkins was just incredible and he later played with Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane. I had already taught myself the cello, but after I saw Hawkins play, that’s when I decided I had to learn the saxophone. I borrowed £600 from father so that I could buy an instrument and it just went from there.’
He agreed to answer two last simple questions. Firstly, which of his own works would he pull out of a burning gallery? He thinks for a second: ‘Possibly the triptych, Marriage Feast or Creation of Man, painted in May 1957. I showed it in my exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1958.’ Secondly, what’s he working on at the moment? He relaxes and expounds. ‘The creativity never stops, I’m always working. At the moment I’m quite interested in making