People, Places and Other Strange Happenings is the current exhibition of paintings by James Cosgrove RSW RGI PAI, at the Royal Glasgow Institute’s Kelly Gallery in Glasgow.
Jimmy Cosgrove, born in 1939, lives near West Kilbride, North Ayrshire, a village which overlooks the Firth of Clyde, with views across to the island of Arran – the firth and the hills of the island beyond often feature in his work, with the firth providing a strong horizontal element in many of his compositions. Although not conveyed literally, there is a strong sense of this specific place in much of his work.
Joining the Army after leaving school, Jimmy trained in cartographic draughtsmanship, and went on to be a Post Office Telecommunications Engineer. He then had a long association with the Glasgow School of Art, firstly as a mature student from 1968, then Lecturer in Textile Design, Senior Lecturer in Printed Textiles and ultimately as Deputy Director until retiring in 1999. Since then he has painted continuously and his work has been exhibited widely – my own awareness of his paintings and their very distinctive look came through successive years of seeing Paisley Art Institute exhibitions at Paisley Museum and Art Gallery.
The artist has given 103 works to the show here, and the RGI says in their preamble, This exhibition is curated, not as a retrospective, but like Jimmy’s amazing output across his life thus far, as a work in progress.‘ Filling the whole gallery is a selection of large, medium and small-scale paintings and drawings, with the 70 or so small works grouped together on seven panels side by side. Most works in the show are for sale.
It soon becomes evident that People, Places and Other Strange Happenings is very appropriately descriptive of what you will see in the works on show. Recurring elements in many of his paintings include people, or heads of people, groups of tall houses, ships on a body of water (the Firth of Clyde), jetties, fields, big hills (the Isle of Arran) and rocks, dramatic skies and sometimes aeroplanes, all in a very distinctive hand. Aspects of the weather feature often in picture titles, and on inspection you can see ‘weather’ conveyed in his works, with elements blowing around in turbulent skies. His stylised human figures fill the foreground, and his houses and their groupings look to be inspired by the local Scottish vernacular architecture.
These are busy compositions and with many components to consider, you won’t take a picture in at a glance: they are evidently story-telling paintings where the artist is leaving it to the viewer to imagine their own story, of ‘strange happenings’. There are unexpectedly bright colour palettes in many works, much warmer than you might expect for a ‘Scottish’ landscape, inspired by Jimmy’s travels to the south-west of the USA and other warmer climes. There is vibrancy, energy and movement in the many elements of his compositions, and a great variety of patterning and mark-making in his brush work. Paintings are mostly in acrylics, and there are elements of collage layered into some works.
The inclusion of the panels of small paintings and drawings is really interesting, and very illuminating in giving an appreciation of how his larger works are developed. There are images from sketchbooks accompanied by Jimmy’s writings and poems, hand-drawn postcards, and others are small paintings. There is a mix of local and far-flung subjects to be enjoyed – Arizona, Mexico, Paris, Madrid and Cornwall all feature.
The imagery of his paintings comes from observation of the world around him, recorded in his drawings, or from half-remembered dreams, and inspiration to paint comes from reading favourite fiction and listening to music. He has said that rather than having a whole composition in mind from the beginning, he often starts with an isolated element, considers what that suggests, and then keeps adding in a cumulative process, often calling on his many travel sketchbooks.
Jimmy has said previously, ‘I use the idea of creating disparate imagery to construct spontaneous or improvised pictorial circumstances. Dreamlike tableaux, half recalled experiences, childhood memories are among the many touchstones in my practice as an artist.‘ *
Without a doubt, each individual viewer will enjoy forming their own interpretation of the stories unfolding in the artist’s visually complex and distinctive landscapes. A visit to the show is highly recommended.
*Of related interest, and available to buy at the RGI, is the publication Looking for Signs: ideas and imagined circumstances by Jimmy Cosgrove and others, published by Graphical House – this accompanied his 2019 exhibition of the same name.
The show runs until to 7th March 2026. Entry is free.
With thanks to Gordon Reid for contributing this review.
