DAMIAN CALLAN
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PAINTING THE PRAM IN THE HALLWAY by Ruth Callan

13/12/2020

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​Damian asked me to write something for this catalogue. We have been friends since we were sixteen, lovers since we were twenty, co-parents since our mid-thirties. My qualification for this task: that of witness.


Damian's artistic talent was recognised at school, but convinced by his parents that art was no way to make a living, he enrolled at the University of Wales Institute of Science and Technology to study Applied Biology. By the end of his degree he knew that he didn't want to be a scientist. Science had left him cold, but voluntary work with children with learning disabilities had interested and moved him deeply.

A year behind him academically, I was studying in Edinburgh. We planned to marry when I finished my degree,so for the last year of my studies, Damian moved to Edinburgh, where he was employed to work with learning disabled young adults by Garvald Centre. The following year we married, spent a year in the South of France, returning In 1985 to be residential house-parents for Garvald.

Without Garvald Damian might never have become an artist. At the time we worked there the atmosphere was one of tremendous spirituality, idealism and creativity. People worked astoundingly hard, with incredible devotion and imagination for very modest salaries. A social work enterprise, there were more Art School graduates in the work force than social scientists. Here Damian's innate creativity blossomed, first as a house-parent, then as a teacher. The blossoming ended when he was 'promoted' out of hands on work with young people into a managerial role. He bore this for one unhappy year, at the end of which he enrolled at Edinburgh College of Art.

Damian was thirty when he embarked on his degree in Drawing and Painting. It was not easy. Figurative, representational art was not in vogue. He was frustrated by how little teaching there seemed to be on offer and felt he was very much left to get on with his work by himself, work which many of the tutors clearly did not find of interest. However, his degree show sold out and resulted in the offer of a one man show at the Stenton Gallery in East Lothian. That same summer (1995) Damian was awarded the Juliet Gomperts Scholarship to study for two weeks at The Verrocchio Art Centre in Tuscany under the English painter, Oliver Bevan.

Damian cannot stress enough how much he owes this man. Bevan was an extraordinary communicator and role model. He demonstrated, he painted alongside his students; over breakfast, lunch and supper he talked about painting in all its aspects - technical, philosophical, even commercial. He was an enormous inspiration to Damian, who felt Bevan not only taught him to paint, but taught him to teach others how to paint.

On his return from Tuscany, Damian painted for his show in East Lothian, while continuing to work part-time at Garvald. (Something he had done all the way through his degree.) Soon after the show, the first of our four children was on the way.

To my distress, when Isaac was born, Damian wanted to describe himself on the birth certificate as a 'social worker' rather than as an 'artist'. With the responsibility of fatherhood, his parents' conviction that art was no way to make a living was reasserting itself. And then a miracle happened.

 A web-site builder (Gavin Bonnar) in the same WASPS building as Damian asked him if he would like to feature on an artists' web-site he was launching. The Internet was then in its infancy (we hardly knew what it was), but Damian said 'Yes'. Shortly afterwards, a young Swede (Peter Leheusen), who had recently inherited his father's shipping company, got in touch. He had seen Damian's work on the web and wanted to commission him to decorate his London flat. Peter was the dream patron: he commissioned copious amounts of work (work for Sweden followed), allowed Damian all the artistic freedom he wanted, paid well and on time. At a critical moment, when Damian might have lost his nerve, Peter enabled him to establish himself as an artist.

The first of our four children arrived in the summer of '97, the second in February '99, the third in February '2001, the fourth in May 2003. Despite Peter's patronage, Damian had not dared give up his part-time Garvald job. This involved evening, weekend and night shifts. With so many babies and small children at home, this was not ideal. Then ECA offered him work as a tutor on their part-time degree course, leading to Damian's giving up social work once and for all.

Damian taught on the part-time degree course for a few years, but eventually stopped. He was particularly troubled by being obliged to participate in a marking system he considered utterly inappropriate. Since then he has been a happy and successful independent teacher (though he does occasionally freelance at the National Gallery) who never awards marks!

It is above all Damian's teaching which has kept the bailiffs from our door. He teaches because it is lucrative, but also because he genuinely likes people, wants to help them and knows from his own experience how valuable a good art teacher can be. Over the years he has taught dozens, probably hundreds of people. Some have become real friends. He enjoys the social contact, he derives real pleasure from his students' progress, but also finds teaching hugely beneficial for his own practice.

I have entitled this piece 'Painting the Pram in the Hallway' (that vehicle and its occupants being considered the traditional enemies of art), but have yet to write directly about Damian's paintings. The paintings in this exhibition depict almost exclusively his family, frequently by the sea, often including cousins and good friends. The fact is that independently of this exhibition, this is what constitutes the bulk of Damian's subject matter.

We brought our children up in a second-floor Edinburgh flat with limited access to a garden.However, Damian's occupation as a self-employed artist and teacher made it possible for us to take the children to the countryside for extended periods of time during the school holidays. We discovered Skipness, Argyll the summer Isaac (our eldest) was born and have been going there twice a year ever since. This is not the height of adventurousness, but we wanted the children to have a place in the country which they knew in depth and where they could run free. Skipness provided this.Our holidays there were (and still are) of necessity inexpensive and simple. We arrive (usually with my sister's family, often with other good friends too) and we guddle there, barely getting into the car until our return home. August in Berneray in the Outer Hebrides is similar.

These very simple, highly sociable holidays have proven hugely productive for Damian. Freed from the demands of teaching, he finds himself discovering new images, new techniques almost faster than he can throw them down on paper. Different artists thrive in different conditions. Days of swimming, playing, fishing with the children, punctuated by short bursts of activity in whatever makeshift studio space he can create, seem to work for Damian, enabling him to paint 'the Joy as it flies'.

Damian paints the human figure in movement, in light. He does the occasional straight portrait, but it is an ability to capture an individual's unique posture / gesture which is his extraordinary gift , I think. The French term for 'still life' is 'nature morte'; Damian's work is, I feel, the opposite of this, it is  'life in movement' / 'nature vivante'. Light too, he loves, especially the intense light with its accompanying long shadows at the end of a Scottish summer's day. (A sunny one!)  Damian paints what he loves: the Human and in painting light, perhaps the Divine?

So much for subject matter. As for style / technique - Damian is a painter's painter. The subjects of his paintings are utterly recognisable, but of the fact that you are looking at a painting and not at a photograph, there can be no doubt. Damian LOVES the alchemy of paint, the brazen mark.

Finally, this exhibition features quite a number of paintings of me. This is a more recent development in Damian's work. Perhaps because the children are leaving home, but I'm still here. It amuses, embarrasses and (I can't deny it) pleases me that he manages to use my ageing form as a springboard for paintings of... the Eternal Feminine? Happy the painter's wife whose husband is an impressionist and not a photorealist!

Ruth Callan
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Lockdown Series: The Light Inside

16/5/2020

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I know that I am experiencing a very privileged lockdown; able to work at home with my family around me. Over the weeks and whilst (virtually) teaching my regular as well as new students, I have wondered over and again about my artistic response to this situation. And while I know this pandemic has been and continues to be a dark experience for many, I've struggled to find an authentic way of expressing my own experience of it. As preparation for some of the online art videos that I have been producing with my artist friend and mentor Aine Divine, I began making drawings 'from room to room' and observing the beautiful sunshine as it breaks into our home. The warmth and often surprising bursts of light appearing across carpets and furniture, glimpsed through half open doors, really moved me and seemed to be a good metaphor for the silver linings of family and home (that at least some of us are experiencing). So here are a few initial sketches and studies combining poses by Ruth with sunlit interiors - visions of hope in challenging times.
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So, when do you know it's finished then?

11/2/2019

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The two fundamental challenges to an artist  are: to find a way of making an income that still allows you to produce your art work and knowing when a particular piece of work is finished. With a solo exhibition approaching next month I have around 30 pieces that I need to decide whether or not are finished.
Artists have all sorts of strategies for determining whether a painting is finished, for example looking at its reflection in a mirror, turning it upside down, or looking at it through the wrong end of a binoculars so that it appears smaller and much further away (didn't Stanley Spencer famously take a ride on a big wheel just so that he could look down from a sufficient distance through his studio window to be able to assess a particularly large composition that he was trying to finish?). Taking a photograph and looking at the reduced version on the camera screen has a similar effect to the standard imperative to stand well back from your easel.
In an ideal artist's world paintings finish themselves - you come into the studio one morning and something just looks complete, finished. Sometimes other people finish paintings for you - they come into the studio, enthuse about  an unfinished work, afford it the status of being finished and you realise  it is. For Auden, a poem was never finished, 'only abandoned' and sometimes deadlines mean you have to abandon 'finishing' a troublesome picture. Phantom deadlines can be helpful if they mean you get something almost there, but still have the luxury of a few days to look and possibly make refinements.
So, how do I know if my 30-odd drawings and paintings are finished? First, I move them around my small studio so that I see them in different places and can be surprised by them; I also find putting paintings of different palettes beside each other can help suggest ways of resolving issues with colour. Then I spread them out in the large teaching space outside my studio and pop out to visit them every hour or so, hoping to be surprised by some insight or other. Eventually I start putting them into temporary frames to see if they look like they really deserve to be all-dressed-up-and-ready-to-hang. Finally the deadline arrives and I have to make some snap decisions - yes, you can go to the ball...no, you're staying at home.
Damian Callan's Solo Exhibition 'Moving Pictures' opens at The UNION gallery, Drumsheugh Place, EH3 7PT on 21st March www.uniongallery.co.uk/exhibitions/97-damian-callan-solo-exhibition


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Moving Images - energy and decisiveness

26/2/2018

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It was painting bathers in the wave machine at Leith Waterworld that was the real breakthrough for me in my time at art college. Up until then most of my paintings died the death on the easel as I worked the life out of them...finishing them off as I attempted to finish them. Then, when I began to investigate the moving water and the figures in action I found that a lighter more gestural approach was needed. Since then I have at regular intervals had the opportunity to work with moving figure subjects: dancers, gymnasts, divers and swimmers, highland games competitors and young children. Each time I return to the theme I find something new and useful in attempting to work in an energetic and decisive way to capture the movement of a figure in action. So this year I have planned a whole series of events centred on the moving figure. Entitled 'Moving Images' this project has already included a couple of workshops working with 2 talented dancers, a third workshop to come based around sports poses and a final session with an Indian Dancer using mixed media to explore that exotic theme. I will be working at DanceBase with a class of students and an Italian dancer next month and in the summer I'll be artist in residence at the  Lochcarron Highland Games.  Later in the year I hope to bring all these moving images together in an exhibition. For more information on the moving figure workshops to come please visit www.damiancallan.com 
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New Year, New Artists?

13/12/2017

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The best way to start a New Year...in the company of a team of young enthusiastic artists whose mission will be to capture some of the animals at Gorgie City Farm in pastels and inks; and then - when they have thawed out - turn these sketches into lino prints, paintings and sculptures in the studio at WASPS, Dalry. I'm always so impressed with how the children cope with the fact that the animals never stay still. I recommend that they cover a page with lots of versions of the particular creature , different sizes and facing in various directions. Then as time passes they are able to return to these sketches and develop them as the same view appears again or as they recall something they have just seen - effectively drawing from memory. Degas was a great advocate of drawing from memory and described his ideal art school as having new students on the ground floor working from the model and with each successive year, experienced students would have to work on higher and higher floors, further from the model and thus reliant on what they could recall from each trip down to view their subject. So, New Year, new artists, switch off those screen menaces and get them out there looking and remembering real life!
http://www.damiancallan.com/childrens-classes.html
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Children & Animals Again!

12/7/2017

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Many artists would agree that there is something of the process of alchemy about making art - turning base materials into precious substance. I have found by that adding children and animals into the mixture as I have been doing this week during the Summer Art School 'Young Zoo Artist's!' an extraordinary magic has been taking place. Today we climbed the hill in the blazing sunshine in search of the zebra enclosure. We got a bit lost and then suddenly over the horizon, through the trees we could see those beautiful, exotic, striped horses grazing in the distance. We climbed onto the viewing platform to get a closer look and the herd evaporated. Quietly the children assembled their art materials; charcoal, chalk, grey sugar paper and the zebras reappeared. Then a silence descended on the place as children and animals concentrated on their respective activities - with an unspoken mutual respect. 
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Reigning Cats and Dogs!

12/4/2017

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Another great day spent in the company of some excellent young artists who have been in pursuit of inspiring cat and dog subjects. We enjoyed the animal displays at the museum and then went in search of depictions of dogs and cats in ancient Celtic carvings and Egyptian tomb artifacts. Yesterday we had a  visit in the studio from Gypsy and Stella, two delightful kittens who, having explored their surroundings, settled into a large box to allow the artists to make their portraits. The course finishes tomorrow with some visiting dog models and an afternoon painting - without brushes... Next course will be in July: see Children's Classes.
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Joan Eardley - or What's So Great About Mixed Media?

11/3/2017

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 iI have been fortunate in being able to teach a class at The National Gallery that began with a look at the current exhibition of Joan Eardley's work and then continued with practical sessions inspired by her approach. Eardley divided her short but successful career between Townhead, Glasgow where she depicted the children and the streets of this soon-to-be-demolished community and the seascapes of Catterline on the East Coast. Her work has tremendous appeal partly because, whilst she strove to abstract her subjects, the images always remained accessible and through a process of building colourful layers and fluid lines she conveyed a tremendous passion and love for her subjects. Her work is also an excellent starting point for teaching people how to abstract or simplify - how to see the essential shapes and lines of their subject and how to work with layers in order to convey the depth and complexity of the real world. Having toured the exhibition and discussed Eardley's process of drawing rapidly in pastel and charcoal before building up her oil paintings in lively spontaneous layers, my students were then able to work with a model dressed a little like one of Eardley's Glasgow School of Art peers from the 1950s. Students were guided in tearing paper shapes for collaging a simplified arrangement of the colours and forms in front of them, before drawing into this base with charcoal and pastel in order to refine the image. The results developed spectacularly from something elementary - like 'Primary 1 glueings', as someone said - to images of astounding depth and complexity; a process that surprised the artists as much as those who viewed the work.
So, what is so great about mixed media? Its the process of discovery that it offers - an opportunity to work with instinct and intuition and an approach that encourages us to be creative and inventive with the materials we use. 
Inspired by these experiences with Joan Eardley's exhibition and the subsequent practical sessions at the gallery, I am running an intensive one day workshop on Saturday 28th March at WASPS studios, Dalry entitled 'Life Drawing in Mixed Media: Anatomy & Colour'. Visit www.damiancallan.com to book a place.

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Performance Drawing

7/11/2016

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The way a Giant Drawing evolves and eventually comes to a conclusion is always a bit of a revelation to me. I generally start out with a rough plan of the composition and buy myself a bit of time in the early stages by working on smaller background figures, before gradually introducing medium sized people in the middle ground. When I was asked by Art In Healthcare in 2013 to produce a Giant Drawing for their contribution to The Edinburgh Art Fair I worked directly from the audience visiting the exhibiting galleries and built up a crowd scene of ever-larger figures. I had been conscious of a big gap in the middle of the composition that I resisted filling in until, having done a brief tour of the exhibits, I noticed a beautiful bronze sculpture of a woman combing her hair and thought it would be ideal for that empty central space. But then it felt as though the arrangement was unbalanced and I needed something strong and bold on the right hand side. This seem to come my way in the form of one of the organisers of the event who stood side-on in front of my own wall of framed works and helped to bring the whole drawing together in the last hour or so of the 3 day event. I've been asked to create a new Giant Drawing for this year's Edinburgh Art Fair from 18th - 20th November; this time based in the restaurant and inspired by the diners and visitors to the bar - there will be a rough plan and some use of scale to suggest depth and perspective...but I'm really looking forward to finding out how it turns out! 
To see the new charcoal drawings that will be exhibited and for sale at The Edinburgh Art Fair go
​to: AVAILABLE WORK
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Anatomy for Artists

5/9/2016

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I have to thank the great George Donald for my knowledge of artistic anatomy. He was a rare inspiring tutor at eca who taught by example - demonstrating during classes and always exhibiting his work so that we could relate what he said to what he actually did. George also gave me my first teaching job at the college and this in turn led me to teach classes in anatomy to life drawing students. I remember one summer school when a particular group of  American students arrived at the life class sporting baseball caps worn backwards and wielding pieces of string that they pointed in a slightly threatening way at the model in an attempt to gauge scale and proportion...one of them boasted that he read volumes of anatomy textbooks at night and could name every muscle known to medicine. I was terrified that I was out of my depth and unqualified to teach them. Curiously though, they couldn't draw for toffee. They could sketch out diagrammatic and anatomical looking figures, but there was no life to them, no sensitivity. The thing was they hadn't grasped that artistic anatomy is about looking and understanding form, how it changes from pose to pose but how it can be described sensitively and through a personal language of marks. The best book on the subject is by Robert Beverly Hale, formerly of the Metropolitan Museum of Art NYC, where he illustrates anatomical landmarks not with diagrams, but with drawings by the Great Masters from Raphael to Degas, so that the point about rendering form in an individual way is perfectly made. I shall return to the subject of human anatomy in a series of 3 Saturday workshops at WASPS studios in September, October and November - ​http://www.damiancallan.com/anatomy-workshops.html

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    Damian Callan is a practising figurative artist and tutor based in Edinburgh.

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