Page 41 - Studio International - November 1966

Scotties's recall of time past, and Proust's. The latter's whom he was apprenticed, must in some measure account
recall is always total and literal; Scottie's is selective and for the sepulchral and archetypal character of his mature
symbolic. But if the fountain is a symbol of life, and vision. At the same time Blake developed his passion for
regeneration, the malevolent faces that at one time the Gothic style and gathered into his being a host of
appeared in his work symbolize the omniprescience of contingent images which, in the words of Geoffrey
human evil. These faces, which materialized frequently Keynes : 'He afterwards reproduced and transformed for
during the war years when the artist was living and his own purposes by passing them through the furnace
working in Toronto, he called Evils and Greedies. They of his creative imagination.' The italics are mine since
symbolized Fascism and brutishness. On the side of light, the term 'transformed' is the key to the aesthetic nature
and love, are also the curious houses, towers, turrets, of the visionary experience in this form of painting.
castles, many with lighted windows, that clearly sym- Whether we are thinking of a sophisticated visionary like
bolize home, rest, security. The artist's quest is partly an Blake, or a primitive visionary like Scottie Wilson, the
intuitive return to the birds, fish, flowers and trees of the motivating springs, the point of germination, the even-
Glasgow fountain days, and partly the blending of this tual substance of vision and its aesthetic expression are
imagery with a philosophy of life as simple as the floating identical. The visionary experience in both instances is
visions of the lost world of childhood. Gauguin wrote in substantially a reclamation of the world of childhood,
1903: 'Sometimes I went back vary far, further than the blown-up and extended by the imagination, and in this
horses of the Parthenon to the world of the rocking horse form used to express, through symbolism, a revelatory or
of my childhood. . . .' Scottie goes back to the fountain apocalyptic message. The mostly tender visions of Scottie
world of his childhood. The artist is totally uninfluenced Wilson are of course radically different in every way
by the work of other painters. His only passion is for from the star-swept, god-trumpeting bible-roaring visions
Blake, an artist who was curiously like Scottie, however of Blake, but it is fundamentally a system of allegory,
different. William Blake also carried within his art the parable, and allusive symbolism which both artists em-
germinating seed of images absorbed into his soul during ploy as their basis of communication. Nor is Scottie
boyhood. His drawings of the tombs in Westminster only tender. In the past—the forties especially—his
Abbey made as a lad for the engraver James Basire to imagery often snapped with savage birds, and trembled
to the weight of apocalyptic beasts. But in the main, Blake
would lead man to salvation through the valley of roaring
visions; Scottie through gentler pastures, into paradise.
In 1953 the artist stayed for a while with the Welsh
painter and poet Brenda Chamberlain at her home on
Bardsey Island. The substance of his art is neatly sum-
marized in the last stanza of a poem she wrote for him at
the time :
I am glad you left my house alive.
Once, speaking of death, you asked me
If it would be a good place to die on,
The island. I am glad you left here alive,
A bundle of dream pictures under your arm;
Your mind busy with footless humming birds,
Peaceful planets, bowls of life and of light.
Apart from its visionary element, the physical structure
of Scottie Wilson's art is essentially decorative. His
imagery exists wholly in a two-dimensional plane, making
no concessions to the academic requirements of scale.
Here, the birds may be bigger than the houses; flowers
may dwarf the trees. This particular quality has led quite
naturally on occasions to his employment as a designer,
at one time by the Edinburgh Weavers, and lately by the
Royal Worcester Porcelain Company, for whom he has de-
signed a range of products: tea and coffee sets, dinner
services, and oven-ware.
Currently the artist is working on a series of delicate
watercolours. In the past he has used mainly ink and
crayon. In these latest works the imagery is wholly
tender. The tensions, the malevolent faces, the harsh,
spikiness of his Canadian years have given ground to a
luminous and tranquil vision; the revelation of paradise
—paradise regained. . . .
q
Family Tree 1952
Pen and coloured crayon
and watercolour
44 x 25 3/4 in.