Gesturing Hiker with Furnace

Category

Museums & Galleries Item

Item no

20677

Title

Gesturing Hiker with Furnace

Description

The painting is oil on board. In the foreground a black and red umbrella sits upon a large green bag. As the title of the work implies, a travelling figure is shown resting near the bellow of fiery furnace. In the left of the painting a bulky naked figure kneels on the floor. The figure's head looks away from the viewer. His right hand reaches out as if to get warmth from the fire. His left hand is wrapped around an object, possibly a cup. The exaggerated proportions are most noticeable in the small furnace. The flames of which explode in reds and yellows across the painting.

Artist / maker

Campbell, Steven

Size

190.5 x 121.9cm

Type

Oil on board

Location

City Art Centre

Accession number

CAC1990/75

Steven Campbell was a Scottish artist, labeled as one of the New Glasgow Boys or "Glasgow Pups" along with Peter Howson, Ken Currie and Adrian Wisniewski, they all studied together at the Glasgow School of Art. In his painting, Campbell creates a dreamlike world in which his cast of characters enact fantastic fantasies and scenarios. Gesturing Hiker dates from immediately before the artist's move to New York on a travelling scholarship. The hiker represents the artist, humble and naked before the prospect of his travels and new experiences abroad. Campbell's art has been described as enigmatic, if not deliberately obscure. Yet while it is certainly the case that his canvases are full of with complex symbolism, his body of work, like the art of William Blake, is both beautiful and perfectly explicable in its references, whether to classical mythology or to the films of Hitchcock.

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