* SUE BIAZOTTI,
HOPE STREET, GLASGOW (1)
oil on canvas
image size 50.5cm x 33cm, overall size 54cm x 37cm
Framed.
Note: One of the "Hope Street" series of 22 paintings exhibited at The Lighthouse, Mitchell Street, Glasgow in April 2013. The arts journalist Jan Patience wrote in The Herald:
Perhaps it is the ghost of her whisky industry grandfather pioneer James Barclay, channelling its way into her art, but for a new series of paintings of Glasgow city centre in the 21st century, Sue Biazotti has conjured up a vision of what could almost be a smoggy Glasgow in the 1930s or 1940s. In a series of 22 paintings called Hope Street, Biazotti, who won the Aspect prize in 2005, has tried to find a way to paint “how she feels about Glasgow”. Biazotti was born in Glasgow but grew up in Gartocharn in Stirlingshire. She trained at Edinburgh College of Art and lived in London for a decade. “I’ve found that I’ve thought about my grandpa a lot as I’ve been working on this series. Strangely, he had his offices near Hope Street. I used to see Glasgow as a dark and foreboding place when I was a child. I think this is coming out in the work. There may be darkness in these paintings, but it is balanced by a lightness of being, which those who know Biazotti’s work will recognise as her signature touch.