Gregor Smith

Gregor Smith is a Scottish painter and printmaker living and working in Glasgow. He studied drawing and painting at Edinburgh Collage of Art from 1962 to 1966, subsequently teaching art in various schools in Central Scotland from 1968 to 2006. During this time he painted and exhibited in several galleries and principal annual exhibitions in Scotland and London. In 1983 he was elected a member of the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour.

"The exhibited works here are similar to a slice out of my current printmaking practice and for me, fits the invitation for Between Islands.

The subject could promote endless discussion but here it is restricted to presenting my visual observations mainly with a Scottish inshore coastal focus. This from someone raised among the steelworks, pits, mines, and farms of Lanarkshire.

Information for printing and painting is sketched on site mainly around Scotland during Autumn to Spring. The site may be on land where the drawing can be more exact or at sea where a rapid response to the subject is best.  Working outside has to be achievable, especially where high winds are not uncommon. Drawing materials are kept to a few, mainly soluble graphite sticks, selected pastel earth colours, a small sponge and some heavy-duty bulldog clips. The sketchbook is carried in a plastic folder with hardboard backing. Location, day, date and time are noted and the sketch annotated both on site or later if required. Winter weather brings its own dramatic backcloth, precipitation and turbulence, vanishings.

Accessing particular sites through sailing on the west coast, for example Between Islands, Corryvreckan, the two islands being Jura and Scarba, brought the subjects closer permitting a stronger composition. More recently using local ferries, coastal perspectives have been made possible.

Not all images however are seaborne in origin. Sounds, Deeps, Bays, Heads and Roads and other stimulating subjects have also been sketched from terra firma and these can provide more detailed information, some from the distant past such as that for the monoprint Industrial Landscape drawn in 1965.

Printmaking has been an important part of my life for around twenty years now and the challenges and solutions which it offers continue to satisfy the creative urge. 

Smith's work has been recently exhibited in The Scottish Landscape Awards, Edinburgh 2024; London Art Fair, 2024; Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour Annual Exhibition, Edinburgh, 2024; Compass Gallery Glasgow Solo Exhibition, 2023; Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London, 2022; The Love of Print, Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, 2022. His work is held in the collections of HRH Duke of Edinburgh, Scottish Arts Council; Globus Gateway New York; District Councils of Perth and Kilsyth and the Education Departments of Fife, Lanark and Dumbarton.