This print was created in conjunction with the Glasgow Print Studio 50th Anniversary Here & Now Legacy Project. "Just look at this pin! The one I used to make this print. It is amazing. Why, in the currently modish “sustainability” stakes it must be right up there. It just refuses to die."

"Taped and re-taped, again and again, to the shrivelled stump of a blue Staedtler '2H’ pencil and now officially ancient, its pin-sharp point still glides elegantly through beeswax like butter. Purchased in 1976 as part of a box containing hundreds from the drapery department of John Lewis Edinburgh, its original purpose was to secure lengths of fabric—cotton satin, silk, crepe-de-chine—to the screen-printing table of Miss Audrey Dixon’s exacting Printed Textiles Department at Edinburgh College Of Art. Later, on inveigling my way into the printmaking department at Inverleith for one day’s relief a week ('It’s the second easiest subject here, Jimmy'!) I strapped a few of these pins to pencils to form ad-hoc etching points. This particular point has served me well over the intervening decades. I have other 'real' etching tools, of course; a humourless, tempered-steel Teutonic engraving point acquired on two bachanalian Belgian printmaking residencies, sundry wire brushes, a quaint old west country sickle and a selection of hypodermic needles. True, the latter--wobbling and skating all over the place-- aren’t very accurate but do lend a satisfyingly dramatic and
unpredictable grand guignol element to any printmaking proceedings. The picture itself is an amalgam of elements from three paintings of mine made over the last thirty years."

"But really, this pin..."

James McDonald was born in Stirling, Scotland in 1956. He studied at Edinburgh College of Art between 1974 and 1978. Following that he was awarded Andrew Grant Travel Scholarship to Paris. He then completed his Post-Graduate in Printed Textiles and Printmaking in Edinburgh between 1978 and 1979

He joined as a member at Glasgow Print Studio in 1980. He has been a full-time practicing artist since 1980, first in the field of printmaking and since 1986 in painting and printmaking. Initially painting from a spare bedroom in a Cumbernauld high-rise, since 1986 he has maintained a studio in Glasgow’s Gallowgate. He was elected a member of The Royal Scottish Society of Painters In Watercolour in 2013.

Solo Shows include: Rijkscentrum Frans Masareel, 1985, Glasgow Print Studio, 1989, 1998, 2002, 2017, Bohun Gallery, 2009, 2017, Roger Billcliffe Gallery, 1994, 2013, 2019 and Retrospective at Callendar House Falkirk, 2019.

Prizes/Awards include: 1985 - British Council Travel Award (Belgium), 1987 - Falkiner Award for Printmaking, Humberside Print Biennale, 1991 - N.S. McFarlane Award, Royal Glasgow Institute, 1992 - Alexander Stone Foundation, Royal Glasgow Institute, 2007 - N.S. McFarlane Award, Royal Scottish Academy and 2012 - David Gilchrist Award, Royal Glasgow Institute.

Collections Include: Victoria and Albert Museum, McMasters Museum Toronto, The Hunterian Gallery, RBS, HBOS, The Walter Scott Foundation and The Port Charlotte Hotel Islay.

Publications by James include: “Intaglio Shores”, 2012, “Outsider”, 2013, “Darkness Has Its Uses”, 2016, “Girl And Asteroid”, 2017 and “Private Views” (publishing Winter 2022).