“Notable is the Wyllie/Murray collaboration commissioned by architects Jenkins & Marr: a 48ft-high painting (by Murray) which incorporates a giant stainless steel sculptural spire by Wyllie. Find it at the Buchanan Street entrance to the South Atrium. You can hardly miss it. Has Scotland's largest shopping development got Scotland's tallest painting? I think so. Murray tells the story.
''George arrived one night saying there was a possibility of doing something ether for the new complex. We first exhibited together in 1981 at the Stirling Gallery in a show called Counterbalance where George made sculpture in response to my paintings and vice versa. We subsequently talked about doing something big together but nothing ever came of it. Then I got ill with MS. However, George ignored this. As he walked out the door he said the piece would need to be about 48ft high.''
The result is spectacularly beautiful. A triumph in every way. Murray worked on six panels, each 8 x 7 feet. ''My studio is too small to fit more that two together - and that was a squeeze. We wanted an earth-to-cosmos feel about it; something that speaks of the transient nature of our lives. George's philosophy addresses 'air and stone and all that's in between'. For me, the piece is quite autobiographical. I'm now so earthbound, but through the painting I can soar. Someone once said to me: 'Your paintings make me want to dance.' I like that.''
He also likes blue, the sort of lapis blue that speaks of infinity. Fourteenth-century Sienese painters used it, so did medieval church stained glass. Klein, Anish Kapoor, and Derek Jarman used it. ''No other colour has that quality of immensity,'' he explains. Lapis blue defines his top panel as it becomes more and more nebular and chamfers to a peak.
''I started at the top. Intense blue with flickers of red to represent the life force, plus a cloud shape; then a pale blue shaft of light and sparkly bits. The penultimate panel (pierced by the bracket for the sculpture) is inspired by a sun-lit hillside - actually Glenshee. I knew the bottom earth section would be most difficult. The problem? How to do it without being too representational.''
Murray treats these paintings like huge watercolours, manipulating floods, runs, and washes of his favourite American Golden acrylic paint (''wonderful stuff which I first discovered because the bottles have easily opened flip caps''), with a extended lightweight mop. ''Crazy! I was stuck at one end with hardly enough strength to hold a fork, never mind a canvas. My wife Liz had the job of lifting and tilting the canvases with me shouting orders. She was wonderful. It got a bit hairy - but I like the volatility of the experience. My heart was in my mouth most of the time. And with this method, the canvas sags and bellys with pools of liquid so you spend a lot of time watching paint dry.''
Liz and Dawson have been married 34 years today.
Wyllie, (busy preparing for an important solo London show later this month) is generous in his praise. ''It's a great painting - and upstages my bloody spire. But it needs the assertive trust of my sculpture to give the whole thing dynamism.'' Wyllie also masterminded the list of 500 children's names, Scottish, Asian, Chinese, on the cloud. ''It introduces the time element. Names come from the past - grandparents perhaps - which exist in the present and will go on in the future. The title comes from MacDiarmid: Divine rhythm, wholly at one with the Earth, riding the Heavens, - to add a bit of wisdom.''
Wyllie himself, now 78, makes the point that both he and Murray disprove the disability and ageism thing. ''Never write us off. Our piece is celebratory and cools off the materialism of the shops. It says, 'Hey - there's a great big planet out there.' The gimbal on my steel sculpture adds the unit of balance that we all need: a sensible compromise between ourselves and nature; ourselves and commercialism. There's always something happening beyond ourselves.”
"A highly accomplished printer-maker and watercolourist, Dawson Murray has personalised the ‘sugar-lift’ technique which allows him to combine elements of both. He applies the unlikely combination of syrup and gouache to a wet metal plate which is then covered with an acid resistant varnish. The plate is then immersed in hot water causing the sugar solution to expand and break through the varnish. By such a process he painstakingly creates imagery which is then inked and printed, although the plate is reworked many times to achieve the desired result. Chance elements created by capillary action on the plate mimic the poetic fluidity and randomness usually only achieved by the watercolourist.
Discussing this, Dawson has said: “I have reinterpreted a traditional technique in a way that allows me to encounter and grapple with the qualities I was used to coping with when painting a large watercolour. The volatility of the interaction of paper, water and pigment and the vigilance required to control these factors create quite an adrenaline rush!” Although each work here has taken many weeks, months – and sometimes years – to prepare, the genesis of this remarkable garden-based imagery with its deep, mysterious blues and greens extends even further back into the artist’s psyche.
The distinctive chevron motifs found in ‘Silent Garden Edge,’ for example, recall a day nearly two decades ago when, in his garden, stark, clear shadows from a chestnut-stake fence fell across a pile of freshly cut logs. A moment in time and a fragment of memory have thus been re-captured using a combination of suggestive, resonant motifs. In spite of a debilitating and worsening disability Dawson Murray, against all the odds, carries on making art which continues to evolve, deepen, mature and grow. Dawson’s perseverance, ingenuity – and the total dedication of his wife Liz in enabling him to achieve this – are truly humbling".