Page 38 - Studio International - November 1966

Scottie Wilson : the visionary experience

Mervyn Levy

Scottie was born in Glasgow seventy-five years ago. At try from Toronto to Vancouver where he bought bulk
the age of 9 he left school to assist his family in the supplies of tinned meats and jams in the canneries.
struggle for survival. He worked in the streets of Glasgow Finally he settled in Toronto, selling cut-glass perfume
with an elder brother selling patent medicines and bottles and buying up quantities of old fountain-pens
health and strength mixtures. In 1906, at the age of 16, from which he stripped the gold nibs. These fragments
he joined the Scottish Rifles, and went to India. (Pro- he took to the refineries where they yielded their precious
fessor Endicott suggests that this visit may account for ounces of pure gold. Then one day, in the artist's own
the frequent appearance of the lotus in his drawings.) words, he found a pen that :
He then went to South Africa, where at Bloemfontein in
looked like a bulldog, with a nib as thick as my finger! 14 ct
1911 he bought his discharge from the Colours. The story gold it was and so unusual, so striking that I said I'm going to
of his release is an amusing one. Having just made a keep this pen. I didn't want to break up the bulldog pen with
substantial 'killing' on the crown and anchor board, he its nib so thick and beautiful. So I kept it. I took my shop in
was sweltering along the dusty South African roads with Young Street. A general store it was, and a few days after
a column of infantry, his clothes and his pockets loaded opening the shop I bought a large table with a thick card-
with coins and a heavy money-belt rubbing painfully board top on which to stand my radio. I'm listening to classical
against his flesh, when he suddenly realized that he music one day— Mendelssohn—when all of a sudden I dipped
the bulldog pen into a bottle of ink and started drawing—
was now in a position to buy himself out of the army. He
doodling I suppose you'd call it—on the cardboard table-top.
gradually fell behind, watched the tail of the column
I don't know why, I just did. In a couple of days—I worked
disappear over a hill and trudged back to base where he
almost ceaselessly— the whole of the table-top was covered
at once bought his discharge. But the balance of his
with little faces and designs. The pen seemed to make me
money was soon exhausted and he worked his passage draw and the images, the faces and designs just flowed out. I
back to England as a ship's stoker. couldn't stop—I've never stopped since that day. Anyway,
In 1914 he joined the army for a second time and fought when the table-top was full up I bought writing-pads, drawing
with the Scottish Rifles on the Western Front. After the books, and cheap crayons in Woolworth's and began to
war he went back to street trading; in Glasgow and then develop my own style of working. The pen stroke and the
in London. He sold anything he could from cigars to crayon colouring. The drawings poured out, and I began
junk. In London he took a stall in the old Caledonian hanging them up all over the shop, and displaying them in
the window. I couldn't stop, you see. It just went on and on.
Market and later a shop in the Edgware Road. He then
And I hadn't any time to look after the shop or the business
went to Canada, returned to England, and in the early
either, and a friend of mine, a watch-maker named Billy,
thirties he felt compelled to return to Canada. It was a
moved in to look after the business for me. I retired behind
crucial move, a part of the fateful plan; 'Life!—it's all a curtain where I drew all day. Then the dealers and critics
writ out for you—the moves you make!—' He con- began calling. Douglas Duncan was the first to take any real
tinued his general trading activities wandering the coun- interest in my work, and Norman Endicott of the University
in Toronto. They loved my work, and bought it from me in
those early days. That's how it all came about. There's nothing
you can do; it's a plan; it's mapped out for you; you just make
the moves you must. The bulldog pen was part of the plan,
that's all. . . .
His working-class origins he still proudly acknowledges
through a life-long addiction to caps and Woodbines. In
the case of the cap there is a subtle affront to the ex-
clusiveness of the upper classes in that the artist now
purchases his favoured head-wear in St James's, S.W.1.
black and white nand-paint
plate 1963 The combination of Woodbine and fine tweed illus-
Royal Worcester porcelain trates simultaneously both the artist's incorruptible
plate
12 3/4 x 15 1/4 in. loyalty to his humble origins, and the mischievous delight
he takes in rubbing shoulders with a facet of society he
dislikes intensely. His boots also are of the finest leather;
Illustrations to this article
courtesy Brook Street cut-down riding boots from Cork Street, W.1, which he
Gallery eases on and off his feet with talcum-powder. These little