Eric Auld: A Personal Retrospective

Enjoyment is a key word in whatever I have produced and I hope that shows in the pieces from student days to the present. Enjoyment in places especially, but occasionaly finding other avenues for my talent. These have often been challanges that have been a more personal encounter.

As a youngster I had always been encouraged to enjoy drawing - not at all surprising since both my parents had been to Art School. Mother returned to Gray’s in her fifties and had many exhibitions throughout the country. Her flower pieces and portraits were much sought after.

So the genes played a big part. But then there was also the dynamic encouragement of Robert Murray at Gordon’s College - he was a delightful teacher and eventual friend.

Being a student from 1948 to 1953 at Gray’s was such an wonderful part of my life. I had good companions in Bill Baxter, Donnie Buyers, Dennie Lee, Ronnie Craig, Meg Duncan and many others that made it a pleasure to be at the School. The lecturers also played their part in making it work - the likes of Alberto Morrocco, Hugh Adam Crawford and Bob Sivell were key in my maturing into a painter. They provided the discipline of good drawing and painting which have always been important in my work.

Luckily, at this time that a forward-thinking Cinema manager, Mr Miller, made use of a large room in the Gaumont Cinema as a Gallery. The first independent gallery in the city had arrived and I had my first one-man show of my student work.

My student work in this online exhibition shows nude figure painting, portraits and out-door studies - all inherent in attaining a good understanding of the different values of visual art. Imaginative treatments were not a strong or necessary consideration - you were being taught the values in painting that could allow you to present your ideas effectively and artistically - individual expression was for the future!

The future, initially, was provided for me by the Robert Brough Travelling Scholarship which allowed me to study the masterpieces in the great galleries of the continent and create paintings as I went from place to place. It was a wonderful experience and also most productive. Another exhibition in the Gaumont Gallery of the Continental work was a welcoming success.

National Service was a break from normality. Those two years of enforced discipline denied any worthwhile painting time but became a splendid outlet for my sporting talent. Basketball, swimming and water polo competitions were the compensations to being in uniform. A few paintings were possible now and then when the week-end pass did not allow time to travel north from Catterick to be with family and Pat.

In 1957 with National Service over, Pat and I were married and teaching began at Rosemount School. Daughters Catriona, Fiona and Deirdre completed our family. I moved to Aberdeen Academy where Alexander S. Burns, a superb water-colourist, was head of department. It proved to be a very creative time for both myself and my pupils. Finally at Kincorth Academy as Principal Teacher I had the satisfaction of creating a first class department with Sandy Petrie and Jim Scott.

I was a Council member of the Aberdeen Artists Society when it reformed under the Vice Presidency of the late, much admired, Ian Fleming in 1959. It has provided a showcase for local artists to show their work annually. But unfortunately my presence in these shows has often been denied by the selection and hanging processes.

Commissions have always been interesting with a demanding range of subject from the City Council, Robert Gordon’s College, Albyn School, Mile End School, Civil Engineers, Torry Research, RNLI, Deeside Golf Club, Aiken Sheet Metal, Printagraph and Aberdeen Oilmen. Recently the Aberdeen Marine Operations Centre for the Harbour Board has been completed. All have been a celebration of features of the city.

That is a brief summary of my life as an artist. ARTIST - that’s a term that has become debased in recent times but it was one I aspired to when I studied at Gray’s and acquired the skills of draughtsmanship and painting. At that stage the ‘seen’ world was uppermost but I felt during the ABBO years that I wanted to portray feelings and thoughts about existence and it required a different approach. My work then became more reliant on my imagination which was satisfying but I returned to my environment - landscape and cityscape.

With an abundance of inspiration around me in the countryside and the city especially has given me ever varied aspects to consider. I have enjoyed adjusting my city to the requirements of my work but still retaining its special characteristics.

There is an opportunity to delve into my unframed drawings from the models at Art School to the imagined figures and studies of later periods.

Advancing years have not diminished my inspiration .

This online exhibition will give patrons a chance to review a small selection of the fifty years of painting that I have enjoyed and my latest offerings of work mainly of the city.

Eric Auld was educated at Robert Gordon's College - studied at Gray's School of Art - Post Diploma Award, Gold Medal and Travelling Scholarship - Scottish Arts Council Award - ABBO Group Exhibitions - over 40 One-man Exhibitions - Professional member Aberdeen Artists Society - Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts - Burgess of the Guild of the City of Aberdeen - Original work in public and private collections throughout the world.

A City of Change: by Ian Strachan

Recently I reminded myself of a city of bygone days when I viewed William Mosman’s oil painting. A view of Aberdeen from the South now hanging in Aberdeen Art Gallery.

The artist portrayed the city as it was in the 18th Century. The viewpoint selected by Mosman, somewhere on the Torry Hill, shows the harbour before the River Dee was diverted and the small town lies beyond the foreground figures of the local people, grazing animals and clusters of small houses. Men fish with long nets in the estuary, probably for the Dee salmon and I can remember similar methods employed before the dwellings of Old Torry were cruelly razed.

The shore-line and the hinterland are visible through a distant haze and it is interesting, with the use of sketches and old maps, to identify a number of the early features - the Kirk of St Nicholas, the Tolbooth, the Windmill Brae, St Katherine’s Hill and the area of the Green in the vicinity of the King’s Palace. The picture has little appeal for me other than its histortic interest which I find fascinating.

Mosman’s impression is of a medieval town but a contemporary and more imaginative interpretation is to be found in 'Aberdeen I' and 'Aberdeen II', two colorful arrangements from the brush of well-known Aberdeen artist, Eric Auld. They are unique in their style and Eric’s treatment, although decorative in one sense, reveals an immense amount of visual information and fine detail. The handling is broad but the detail is captured nevertheless.

The artist has brought the great spires and towers of the city together in one large composition. The modern idiom is not forgotten with the massive St Nicholas House and several steel and concrete structures of the 20th century. The human element is suggested with the sculpured figures of poet and patriot and the changing times are reflected in a distant harbour flanked by a familiar Roundhouse. Modern technology plies between port and platform. The eye is attracted along the city’s Union Street towards the old historic centre of the town.

The painting is a fine tribute to the City, to its great buildings of the past but the acheivements of its citizens shine through. We are reminded also of the new technologies which guide our fortunes The two paintings are expressive of the artist’s love and intimate knowledge of his native city.

For myself, although it is a present day theme, the pictures are a happy reminder of the Granite City which I knew in days gone by.

ABBO: Four Aberdeen Artists

Eric Auld and Bill Baxter attended Robert Gordon's College; Donny Buyers and Bill Ord the Grammar School however, they all met at Gray's School of Art.

Between 1957 and 1967 ABBO exhibited all over Britain and even in Holland. In 1965 Aberdeen Art Gallery recognised the importance of their work with an exhibition.

This book chronicles the artist's efforts to have their work exhibited and records their lives and output with many drawings and colour reproductions of their paintings. ABBO, though not always recognised in art circles were undeniably at the forefront of Scottish painting during the last half of the twentieth century.

Rosemary A. Johnson was born in Shetland in 1933 . At the age of seventeen she had her first success as a writer when the BBC accepted a short story for broadcasting. She met her future husband, Bill Baxter in 1956, the year after graduating from Aberdeen University.

She writes of ABBO and the Aberdeen of the second half of the 20th century as an eyewitness.

Four Aberdeen Artists by Rosemary A Johnson £22.00

Click this line to purchase the book.

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