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Artworks
William Gillies RSA
Landscape With Pink Sky, around 1935oil on canvas80.4 x 91.9cm (support)Although recognisable as a rural landscape Gillies' concerns are painterly here. He uses non-representational colour and a flattened overall patchwork of pattern to express a feeling of place. Like in...Although recognisable as a rural landscape Gillies' concerns are painterly here. He uses non-representational colour and a flattened overall patchwork of pattern to express a feeling of place.
Like in Autumn Durisdeer, we find a lone tree in a semi-abstract landscape. Gillies explored this motif regularly in his compositions. In 1937, his contemporary, the English artist John Piper, said of his desire to return to figurative painting from near total abstraction that ‘It will be a good thing to get back to the tree in the field’. This was apt for Gillies too, who liked to tread that same boundary in his practice.