Callum Innes – a pure land

Cal­lum Innes (b. 1962) is one of the most sig­nif­i­cant abstract painters of his gen­er­a­tion. He is also one of the few artists work­ing in abstrac­tion to include water­colour as a major part of his prac­tice, his explo­rations in this medi­um form­ing a par­al­lel body of work – in effect, a ​‘break’ from his oth­er paint­ing. a pure land doc­u­ments a series of 50 water­colours that Innes com­plet­ed in his Oslo stu­dio, dur­ing lock­down, in the spring of 2020. The book draws its title from the poem by Thomas A Clark, which Innes finds inspirational.

‘When lock­down occurred, I was set­ting up a new stu­dio, in Oslo. The con­text was unfa­mil­iar, and I had no ref­er­ence to ear­li­er work, as I do in Edin­burgh. I turned to water­colours again, always start­ing the day with a black and white one … these being the most elu­sive. We placed the work sequen­tial­ly in the book, so you can see how each informed the next, and so on.’ – Cal­lum Innes

Cal­lum Innes began exhibit­ing in the mid-1980s and in 1992 had two major exhi­bi­tions: at the ICA, in Lon­don, and the Scot­tish Nation­al Gallery of Mod­ern Art, in Edin­burgh. Since then he has achieved inter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion through major solo and group exhi­bi­tions world­wide. He was award­ed the Jer­wood Prize for Paint­ing, in 2002, the Nat West Prize, in 1998, and in 1995, he was short­list­ed for the Turn­er Prize. He works between Edin­burgh and Oslo.

Thomas A Clark was raised in Greenock, Scot­land. His poet­ry has been con­sis­tent­ly atten­tive to form and to the expe­ri­ence of walk­ing in the land­scape, return­ing again and again to the lone­ly ter­rain of the High­lands and Islands.