Page 21 - Studio International - March April 1975

little exercises to keep myself an artist and Socialist movement in Glasgow with Edwin writer. Studied English at Edinburgh
preserve myself from becoming an Muir. Director of Education for Selkirkshire. University under Professor George
Saintsbury. Studied music in France with
administrative clot. But every day they 2 Henry Lintott, 1877-1965. RSA. Studied Jean Roger-Ducasse.
were swept away in my wastepaper at the Royal College of Art. Came to
basket like the Indian sweeps away his Edinburgh when the College of Art was still 5 Clayton Price, 1874-1950. Cowboy painter.
sandpaintings when he moves on. Nature part of the Royal Institution. Sensitive Rode the ranges in Wyoming and in Canada.
Living in Monterey 1918-1927. Spent the
must not be disturbed by man. I'm a painter and great teacher. rest of his life in Portland, Oregon.
countryman, so my paintings belong to 3 Tom Scott, RSA. 1854-1927. Scottish
the ground, to the earth. • watercolour painter. Studied painting at the 6 Quote from `Ska-Hawtch Wha Hae !' by
Royal Institution, Edinburgh, under Roy Campbell, printed in the CATACOMB,
Sam Bough, who is very underrated now. April, 1949.
William Ritchie, MA., 1885-1967. Studied
at Edinburgh University under Professor 4 Francis George Scott, Hon.LLD, Glasgow. Norman Dawson, b. 1903. Studied at
George Saintsbury. Member of Guild 1880-1958. Scottish composer and song- Royal College of Art. Surrealist painter.

2. an appreciation by Tamara Krikorian

It is a reflection on the art institutions
of a country when they overlook the
worth of one of their nationals who has
moved away elsewhere and received
acclaim only from 'strangers'. William
Johnstone is one of the more obvious
examples; only recently has he received
recognition in his native Scotland. Why ?
Perhaps because of traditional support of
naturalistic landscape traditions, of an
overriding concern with colour or
colouring, with landscape dominating
subject matter. One of the greatest
difficulties of Scottish art institutions
seems to have been in coming to terms
with abstraction, a strange fault in a
culture developed against a background
of Celtic Art.
Like his compatriot Rennie
Mackintosh, Johnstone recognised the
neglect of rich native sources. He says
that it was his discovery of American
Indian art during a stay in California in
1928 which led him to abstract art in
Europe, to studies of Pictish and Celtic
art, and eventually to the linking of
certain contemporary British artists, Ode to the North Wind 1928
notably surrealists, with a purely insular
tradition in his book 'Creative Art in
England' (1936).
Though 'primitivism' had been a
subj ct of discussion since the 189os, and
Worringer had explored it as early as
5908, it was not until many years later
that it was clearly distinguished from
ethnography. For the period,
Johnstone's work expressed a very
advanced understanding of the relations
between primitivism and creative art. The
way in which he pursued his experiments
in painting, particularly in 5927-8 when
he worked in a variety of media, including
gold leaf, gesso, fresco and oil, sand, and
the laying of emulsion on board (the work
in fact which took him to America)
relates very much to his philosophy.
Intuition and change, he believes, are
the fundamental principles of creative
art, freedom in painting is of paramount
importance considerations which took
him to the frontiers of surrealism, though
his approach was a modified one, similar
to Robert Motherwell's, and yielding to
the subconscious rather than being
informed by it. Douglas Hall has
compared the surrealism of his A Point in
Time (Scottish National Gallery of
Modern Art), a key early work, with the
91