* IAN HUGHES (SCOTTISH 1958 - 2014), CANCRE oil on photograph on board, signed and titled verso 135cm x 122.5cm Framed Note: Ian Hughes, who has died aged 55, was a well known, inspirational artist producing dramatic paintings on serious themes. Glasgow born, he graduated from Dundee College of Art in 1980, and after various travelling scholarships and awards, settled in Edinburgh. He was a courageous painter and a kind man. Throughout his career he tackled the difficult issue of mental instability in a most impressive way, both in his pictures and as a psychiatric nurse, never deviating from his cause, never painting for the market place, never sensationalising his subject. His work was recognised with major exhibitions at the Scottish National Gallery, and in Rostov-on-the-Don. He is also represented in many UK public museums, including The Whitworth Museum Manchester, Talbot Rice Edinburgh, Tate Gallery, Fleming Collection London, Coutts Bank and Shell. Abroad, his work is found in France, the US, Russia and Poland, and Sean Connery, Bob Geldof, Nick Nairn, Madonna, Peter Gabriel and Lord Maclennan MP are among his many collectors. In 1986, Hughes and his friend Phil Braham showed together at Main Fine Art, Glasgow in Double Vision. It was a memorable year. The pair had objected to the lack of Scottish art in the festival programme and decided to stir things up by hanging pictures on the railings of Edinburgh's Royal Scottish Academy. Festival director Frank Dunlop took up the challenge with a show of young emerging Scottish artists, which evolved into two big official festival exhibitions, Artists at Work in 1986, and 1987's The Vigorous Imagination, a seminal exhibition which finally asserted the vitality and diverse potency of contemporary Scottish art. It is an added poignancy that Hughes died on the eve of the opening of Generation, the biggest celebration of Scottish art ever.