Month: February 2021

In December 2019 we heard the news that one of Scotland’s best-loved writers and artists, Alasdair Gray, had passed away at the age of 85. Since then, Sorcha Dallas has been working hard to establish the Alasdair Gray Archive, with the aim of preserving Gray’s collections and celebrating his prolific life work.

In this interview we speak to Sorcha about her personal connection with Alasdair, her exciting plans for the Alasdair Gray Archive, plus a new initiative to celebrate ‘Gray Day’ (the original publication date of Gray’s famous novel Lanark) alongside Canongate Books on the 25th of February.

As Sorcha explains, the new Archive will be established at a physical studio space in Glasgow, fitted out with Gray’s books, paintings and sketches, and replicating the feeling of Alasdair’s own workspace. Altogether, the new Archive will ensure that Alasdair Gray’s legacy continues to continue to inspire – from exhibitions, loans to public galleries and museums, as well as supporting the work of new artists.

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Could you start by telling us a bit about your own background and your connection with Alasdair Gray?

I graduated from the painting department at Glasgow School of Art in 1998. Between 1999-2004 I co-founded and curated the moving gallery Switchspace, which delivered a programme of exhibitions showcasing Glasgow based artists, at varying stages in their careers, in ever-changing unused spaces throughout Glasgow.

The support and interest Switchspace generated evolved into the establishment of my permanent gallery space, Sorcha Dallas, to offer a sustainable support structure for a new generation of emerging artists based in the city which I ran from 2002-2011. My working relationship with Alasdair goes back to 2008 when I was running my commercial gallery, however my interest began many years before whilst studying at GSA and reading Lanark.

I was also aware of how Alasdair’s work permeated through the West End of Glasgow, an area in which I have lived most of my adult life. I had encountered his murals in The Ubiquitous Chip restaurant and bar, within the auditorium of Oran Mor, found his carefully designed books in the former Byres Road booksellers John Smith’s, and had snatched glimpses of his distinctively styled paintings through tenement windows. So from the start I was aware of his expansive practice and how this had never been formally accessioned.

I was prompted to start to look at this in relation to his visual archive as he was working on A Life in Pictures with Canongate. I helped him collate and locate details of works he wanted to feature and created a system which detailed further information on them such as year, medium and owner. This then became a starting point to try to map his wider works, beginning with the ones he had at home and then expanding to take into account works in public and private collections.

This was invaluable to work from when planning The Alasdair Gray Season, a city wide series of exhibitions and events that I devised for Glasgow Museums in 2014/15, the central show being the retrospective ‘From the Personal to the Universal’ at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum.

An archive for Alasdair’s work seems like such a wonderful and necessary idea. How did the idea for the project come about?

When I started working with Alasdair he was in his 70s so I was very much aware of his legacy and recording his thoughts for how best to preserve this posthumously. Over the years we formalised this by way of a Foundation, and we secured charitable status with one aim being the creation of an archive for future generations.

We applied for funding to help support and digitise his archive but had limited success. I continued to work on this voluntarily (after I closed my gallery in 2011) but was limited in what I was able to achieve. Since his accident in 2015, Alasdair had been severely restricted in what he was able to create visually. He was in a wheelchair, which affected his ability to paint and draw at any large scale. He was desk bound and his output became focused on his translations of Dante and accompanying illustrations (which he had started before his fall).

After Alasdair’s passing there was an urgency in getting his affects secured as we had a three month window in which to do so and vacate his property. I had to move quickly to organise and secure partners, with the support of Alasdair’s family.

Elements of the archive were taken into temporary store by several institutional partners which we hope will secure them longer term. The Scottish Government stepped in to support the premises for the Archive at The Whisky Bond in Glasgow, and the safe installation of Gray’s materials there. The week before lockdown saw the final packing and removal of Alasdair’s works into the space.

It was a strange time, the feeling of a collective breath being held and unsure, once exhaled, what the world would look like on the other side. It felt very much like the end of things and it was very difficult to say a final goodbye to Alasdair’s flat and a space I had the privilege of being in so many times.

“It has been a great source of comfort and inspiration in such a challenging year.”

But in the midst of all this uncertainty it was reassuring to have the anchor of Alasdair and his work. It has been a great source of comfort and inspiration in such a challenging year and I have been grateful for the hope it has offered at such an uncertain time.

The Archive will seek to generate opportunities from Alasdair’s work – this could be new, interpretative or critical interpretations and commissions. A central aspect is audience development, with a focus on education. Alasdair would often talk about the formative cultural experiences he had as a child and it seems key to create this for others in Alasdair’s name.

The Archive’s hopes are very much in the spirit of all things Gray – to create democratic, questioning and equitable opportunities and foster the idea of community and kindness. It will be exciting to see how these develop moving forward as there is so much scope with the scale and breadth of what Alasdair has left behind. I feel very fortunate to be the custodian of such a rich resource and am hopeful for what it can help us learn in the future.

On the archive site you talk about using Alasdair’s work to explore Scotland’s collective identity. Could you tell us more about that idea?

Alasdair Gray was a true polymath with his unique vision spanning multiple mediums. He made poems, plays, short stories, novels, political essays, marginalia, typeset and designed his books and those of others, created murals, paintings, drawings and prints.

“Alasdair Gray was a true polymath.”

He taught creative writing and visual art whilst actively championing those around him. He was a proud supporter of socialism, believing in a fair and equitable society. He lived by these principles, paying assistants at the same rate of pay as himself and valuing the ability for everyone to have the right to the freedom of thought that culture provides. This was most notable in his support of libraries and the belief in the transformative power of literature and the arts. As a child he would use books to travel and experience different worlds and cultures from his bedroom in Riddrie.

This had a profound effect on Gray and is a cornerstone of the aims and objectives of the Archive. To offer that space to others, to learn about themselves and others, and to travel back inspired by what they have learnt and to explore our collective identity through this process.

So many people seem to have their own memorable stories from meeting Alasdair – is that something you’d like to collect as part of the archive?

Absolutely. The fact that Alasdair meant so much to so many is essential to capture. He was well known for backing up a book signing by doing personal dedications and drawings, as well as sketching and giving away portraits to folk he encountered. This generosity and interest in connecting with others means there is a rich resource of personal memories to now capture.

I am developing ways of doing this digitally via the Archive website and also through physical visits to the space (when it is safe to offically open). One way I am starting to capture this now is via the podcast, Gray Matters and Wee Gray Matters (aimed at children).

I am working on these with Ali Braidwood from Scots Wha Hae who has been integral to faciliating these programs and making them happen. They will initially look at Lanark (to coincide with anniversary plans for 2021/2022) but the hope is to extend them beyond this and to explore Gray’s wider extended practice. We will be launching these on Gray Day!

Will Gray Day become an annual event? How should people celebrate?

I would love it to become an annual event! People can change their avatar on the day to the Gray Day logo, they can share memories, photos, stories and clips using the tagging #GrayDay, The Archive and Canongate so we can spread the word, celebrate and share. There will be content released on the day itself and in the lead up so please sign up and follow www.grayday.info.

You’ve just announced a very exciting studio space people can visit and get a feel for Alasdair’s old workspace. Why did you think this aspect of Alasdair’s process needed to be preserved, rather than just his finished books and artwork?

Alasdair was a true polymath, creating work across space and form. Anyone who visited him at home will remember what a unique working and living space he occupied. Shelves were crammed full of books, paintings displayed on every wall, sketched boards stacked on the floor and layered on ledges, rows upon rows of potted pens and pencils, shells covering fireplaces, sculptures and artworks of others arranged, works in process being tippexed and altered on desks and easels.

I vividly remember the first time I visited his flat and how I had to almost catch my breath at what I encountered. His space gives a unique insight into his expansive working practice and it was essential to capture, record and recreate this for others to experience and learn from.

The Archive holds the collection of original visual artworks, sketches and drawings bequeathed to Gray’s son Andrew and held there for research and learning purposes. It also houses all Gray’s original prints, a restaging of his working studio set up, a section of his personal library, all Gray publications (including those he designed for others) as well as a section of literary papers, photographs and correspondence. When it is safe to do so the new space will be open to the public for bookable visits and through the developing website.

This extensive collection will allow the Archive to present Gray’s work in the future in a number of different contexts; through exhibitions, long term loans to public galleries and museums as well as acting as a catalyst for new commissions. The Archive will also hope to act as a centre for research, allowing a unique, unparalleled opportunity for students, academics and the wider public to gleam a fuller understanding of the expansive nature of Gray’s practice and the invaluable contribution he made to 20th century culture. A core aim will be to support others by means of a series of tiered awards and to create new audiences through engagement and commissioning opportunities.

See more from the Alasdair Gray Archive at thealasdairgrayarchive.org

Photography by Alan Dimmick

Today marks the 128th birthday of Nan Shepherd, one of Scotland’s most celebrated but also most elusive writers. For this feature we were delighted to interview writer and poet Charlotte Peacock, author of Into the Mountain: A Life of Nan Shepherd, as well as Wild Geese: A Collection of Nan Shepherd’s Writings.

As Charlotte explains in this interview, Shepherd was one of the best-known writers of 1930s Scotland, then faded into literary obscurity. Then, in 1977, came the work for which she is most famous, The Living Mountain – a short but powerful reflection of Shepherd’s experiences walking in the Cairngorms.

With increasing interest in her work over the last few years, and even with her image appearing on the £5 banknote, Charlotte tells us how the world has finally caught up with the wonderful life and legacy of Nan Shepherd.

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What first sparked your interest in Nan Shepherd? 

It was Robert Macfarlane’s book, The Old Ways, which I read in 2014. Until then, I’d never heard of Nan Shepherd or The Living Mountain. Intrigued by Macfarlane’s descriptions of her book, I promptly went out and bought it. Then I read it and re-read it.   

Because it’s the kind of book that bears re-reading. Every time you open it, you find something surprising, a new insight, or shift in perspective. But I also found myself growing more and more curious about its author.   

“In the 1930s Shepherd was one of Scotland’s best-known writers.”

Who was this woman, wandering around the Cairngorms, often alone, in the late 1920s and 30s? This woman who turned herself upside down to see the earth as it must see itself, who bathed naked in tarns, walked barefoot on heather and slept out on the plateau on summer nights?  

I did some digging, but biographical information about Shepherd was scant. What little I did find, raised more questions than it answered.  

In the 1930s Shepherd was one of Scotland’s best-known writers. Between 1928 and 1934 she published three novels and a volume of poetry. Hailed as a writer of genius, she was declared Scotland’s answer to Virginia Woolf.  

And then? Nothing. Shepherd didn’t produce another major work until The Living Mountain in 1977. In the meantime, her books went out of print and she appeared to have slipped into literary obscurity.  

Why the forty-year literary silence, I wondered. And, why did the manuscript of The Living Mountain lie unpublished in a drawer for over three decades?  

There were mysteries, too, in Shepherd’s personal life. Who, for example, was the subject of the sonnets in her poetry collection, In the Cairngorms? Shepherd never said. But as I soon discovered, Nan Shepherd was as reticent about herself as she was about her writing.  

There seems to have been a revival of interest in The Living Mountain over the last few years. Why now? 

Back in the 1940s when Shepherd wrote The Living Mountain, the only person who read the manuscript was her friend, the novelist Neil Gunn. ‘And that he should like it was not strange,’ she says in her foreword to the book ‘because our minds met in just such experiences as I was striving to describe’.   

Both writers were aware that their work was ahead of its time. ‘I can see, Nan, that the world doesn’t want the well-water,’ Gunn wrote to Shepherd in 1946. ‘It doesn’t know that it needs it’.  

When The Living Mountain did eventually appear in print in 1977, it was moderately successful. But many simply didn’t get it.  

So why now? I think it’s simple really. The world has finally caught up. It knows it needs the well-water.  

Nan Shepherd is often associated with the Scottish Literary Renaissance. Did Shepherd think of herself as being part of a cultural movement? 

She was definitely engaged with the issues concerning the Scottish literary revivalists. You only have to read her correspondence with Agnes Mure Mackenzie, Helen Cruickshank and Hugh MacDiarmid to see that.  

Also, given the timing, and that she said she only wrote when she felt there was ‘something that simply must be written’, you could read her novels as a response to the literary renaissance movement. Certainly, all three of them show characteristics associated with it. Not least, her experimental, narrative technique.  

“I don’t think Shepherd would care to be categorised.”

But I don’t think Shepherd would care to be categorised. She hated the idea of movements, rules, and schools being applied to art. 

‘All categories are absurd where art is concerned,’ she said in an interview in 1931. ‘Mental inertia makes one flick a book into a category and then suppose that is all there is to it. Whereas what there is to it is an individual mind, a mode of experience, a whole universe, one unique vision of truth. Or should be’.  

Shepherd is best known for The Living Mountain, but could you also tell us a little about her fiction? What would you recommend to readers? 

If you’ve read The Living Mountain and you’re looking for more of Shepherd’s lyricism, her novels won’t disappoint. Her fiction is as sensory as her non-fiction. Her imagery, rooted in the Scottish landscape, can be as condensed and compact as poetry. And like The Living Mountain, The Weatherhouse, in particular, offers endlessly shifting perspectives.   

Unsentimental portraits of rural communities, Shepherd’s novels are shot through with her trademark wry humour. But she’s not without compassion for her characters and has an acute grasp of the pleasure and toughness of rural life.  

“Her imagery, rooted in the Scottish landscape.”

She’s deft at conjuring a character, too — sometimes in no more than a couple of brush strokes. There’s Bawbie Paterson ‘with her goat’s beard, her rough hairy tweed like the pelt of an animal’ in The Weatherhouse. And the brassy Bella Cassie in A Pass in the Grampians, with ‘her impudent copper hair puffed out in front’, carrying ‘her curves like a Queen’.  

If you’re new to Shepherd’s fiction, I’d start with The Quarry Wood. It was her first book, published in 1928 and as well as being heavily autobiographical — as first novels often are —it’s also her most accessible.  

Her best novel, I think, is The Weatherhouse. It’s my favourite of the three and perhaps the hardest to get into. But it’s all the more rewarding for it.  

I’m also a big fan of Descent from the Cross. A long, short story at 10,000 words, you’ll find it in Wild Geese, along with a selection of Shepherd’s other prose writing and some previously unpublished poetry.  

What does Shepherd’s fiction tell us about Scotland (or at least her corner of it) at the time – particularly about women’s lives? 

All Shepherd’s novels are set in rural communities of Scotland’s North-East. It was a landscape and people Shepherd knew well. She lived in Aberdeenshire all her life, much of it in the same house. And, all of her novels explore women’s identity and position in early twentieth century society.  

It was a period when opportunities for women were expanding after all, what with the right to vote and access to higher education and into the professions. Aberdonian society, however, was slow to change and in the 1920s it was still heavily patriarchal.  

What’s more, societal expectations were not just down to male attitudes. As Shepherd’s novels reveal, paradoxically, it was often women who upheld these patriarchal prejudices. Women like the conservative Leggatt aunts, the epitome of middle-class, staid respectability, whom Shepherd so deliciously satirises in The Quarry Wood. 

Shepherd’s heroines are all educated young women, living in tight-knit rural communities in the early decades of the twentieth-century. Realising there must be something more for them in life than the roles allocated to them, each one grapples with her social situation, trying to strike a balance between challenge and acquiescence. It was a struggle Shepherd understood; it mirrored her own.  

Your biography paints a picture of an ‘elusive’ writer. Could you say a little more about this? Did anything about her life surprise you? 

Enigmatic and elusive are the adjectives most used about Nan Shepherd. Time and again journalists remarked on how taciturn she was on the subject her writing. Of course, for an Aberdonian, ‘self-praise is nae recommendation. But it wasn’t just about her writing she was reticent.  

Shepherd was an intensely private person. A listener, not a talker, she had a talent for ‘untroubling silences’. The day Jessie Kesson first met her on the train, for example, Kesson says they ‘tired the sun with talking’. Yet during their entire conversation, the only information Shepherd volunteered about herself was that she was off to walk in the hills. 

She left no journals and much of her correspondence was pitched out. In some instances, the letters extant in her archives are carefully censored. Lines are scored through, pages snipped into and sometimes completely torn out. Even in her commonplace books, into which she copied extracts of writers’ work she admired, there is rarely any personal comment.  

“Shepherd was an intensely private person.”

I think there was a very good reason for Shepherd’s reticence: fear of censure. A few months before she died in 1981, she wrote to a friend who’d apparently suggested she write her memoirs: ‘As for writing about my experiences,’ she said, ‘if I did that recognisably, I’d be for it’.  

In 1920s bohemian London, the Bloomsbury crowd lived in squares, painted in circles and loved in triangles. They made no secret of their unconventional attitudes. But prim and proper Aberdeen could not have been further from Bloomsbury in its outlook and relished gossip. If Aberdonians loved in triangles, they kept it to themselves.  

Nan Shepherd could not afford a whiff of scandal. It would have affected her family as well as her career. It was vital she at least appeared to conform to the role of respectable, modest, middle-class woman foisted on her by society.  

It took some unravelling, but when I finally worked out the identity of the man she was in love with for many years, I wasn’t surprised she had kept it secret. The only thing about Nan Shepherd that really surprised me, was that she never learned to drive.  

charlottepeacock.co.uk