{{Short description|Scottish artist}} {{for|the Scottish football player|Ken Currie (footballer)}} {{Use dmy dates|date=August 2017}} {{Use British English|date=August 2017}} {{Infobox artist | name = Ken Currie | image = | image_size = | alt = | caption = Ken Currie in 2016 | birth_name = | birth_date = {{Birth date and age|1960|03|9}} | birth_place = North Shields, North Tyneside, England, UK<ref name=NGS2>{{cite web|url=https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/artists/ken-currie |title=Ken Currie |website=National Galleries of Scotland |access-date=15 January 2025}}</ref> | death_date = | death_place = | spouse = | field = Painting, Printmaking | training = Glasgow School of Art | movement = | works = Three Oncologists, Portrait of Peter Higgs, Chimera | patrons = | awards = | elected = | website = }} '''Ken Currie''' (born 1960 in North Shields, North Tyneside, England) is a Scottish artist known for figurative painting and portraits. In his early career, in the 1980s, he was associated with the New Glasgow Boys group of artists. Currie was elected to the Royal Scottish Academy in 2024.
His work often deals with the themes of class, illness, and decay. Currie says he wants his work to "hover in that area between beauty and horror". His work is in many major collections including the Tate, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Yale Center for British Art, and the New York Public Library.<ref name="Tatler">{{cite web|url=https://www.tatlerasia.com/lifestyle/arts/ken-currie-artist-interview-flowers-gallery |title=Scottish Artist Ken Currie On His First Solo Exhibition In Asia |author=Giles, Oliver |date=16 April 2021 |access-date=15 January 2025 |website=Tatler Asia}}</ref><ref name="SM13" />
==Education & Works== Currie was born in England to Scottish parents and grew up in Barrhead, near the city of Glasgow.<ref name="SM13" /> He started studying at the Glasgow School of Art in 1978 and graduated in 1983.<ref name="FG">{{cite web|url=https://www.flowersgallery.com/artists/174-ken-currie/ |title=Ken Currie |access-date=14 January 2025 |website=Flowers Gallery}}</ref> In the late 1980s he was gaining attention as part of the New Glasgow Boys, a group of young Scottish figurative painters, including among others the artists Peter Howson, Adrian Wiszniewski and Steven Campbell.<ref name=SM13>{{cite web|url=https://www.scotsman.com/arts-and-culture/interview-ken-currie-on-the-terror-of-mortality-1567222 |title=Interview: Ken Currie on 'the terror' of mortality |newspaper=The Scotsman |author=Mansfield, Susan |date=20 July 2013|access-date=14 January 2025}}</ref>
Throughout the 1980s, Currie's work depicted heroic workers and revolutionary union representatives as part of a bigger "socialist Clydeside". This is seen as a response to the policies of then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.<ref name=SM13-2/> Currie was involved with the Communist Party and describes his political views at the time as those of a "typical Scottish leftist".<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/views/people/65174/ken-currie-as-an-artist-its-not-for-me-to-proselytise |title=Ken Currie: As an artist, it’s not for me to proselytise |author=McAllister, David |date=11 March 2024 |access-date=15 January 2025 |magazine=Prospect}}</ref>
In 1987 Currie finished an eight-piece series of large-scale paintings of the massacre of the Calton weavers of 1787, which was the violent suppression of a strike by the British Army, resulting in " Scotland's first working-class martyrs".<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.glasgowtimes.co.uk/news/12782590.Friends_set_to_bring_city_apos_s_Calton_Weavers_back_to_life/ |title=Friends set to bring city's Calton Weavers back to life |date=17 May 2007 |access-date=14 January 2025 |website=Glasgow Times}}</ref> The paintings which were commissioned for the 200th anniversary of the massacre are now hanging on the ceiling of the People's Palace in Glasgow.<ref name=FG/><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.mediamatters.co.uk/media/kcurrie.html |title=THE GLASGOW HISTORY MURAL |access-date=14 January 2025 |website=Media Matters |archive-date=1 December 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101201075042/http://www.mediamatters.co.uk/media/kcurrie.html |url-status=dead }}</ref>
Starting with the early 1990s Currie began to be emotionally affected by the political and humanitarian crises in Eastern Europe, such as the Yugoslav Wars.<ref name=Tatler/> He incorporated this in his art by depicting decaying and damaged bodies.<ref name=NGS2/>
While many of his portraits are loosely based on his own face, Currie has completed portraits of notable people. His work Three ''Oncologists,'' completed in 2002, depicts three doctors working at the Ninewells Hospital in Dundee: Professor Robert J. C. Steele, Professor Sir Alfred Cuschieri and Professor Sir David P. Lane. Commissioned by the Scottish National Portrait Gallery it is one of his most well-known paintings.<ref name="SM13" /><ref name="SM13-2">{{cite web|url=https://www.scotsman.com/news/new-artists-neglect-hard-graft-says-ken-currie-1567936 |title=New artists ‘neglect’ hard graft, says Ken Currie |date=14 July 2013 |access-date=15 January 2025 |newspaper=The Scotsman |author=McGinty, Stephen}}</ref><ref name="Tatler" /> In 2005 Currie was commissioned by the University of Edinburgh to paint a portraiture of theoretical physicist Peter Higgs.<ref name=FG/>
In 2011 Currie unveiled ''Immortality'', a body of work consisting of paintings of the wealthy and famous. The title is an ironic nod at their inability to cheat death.<ref name=SM13/>
In 2019 he revealed ''Unknown Man'', a large-scale portrait of forensic anthropologist Dame Sue Black.<ref name="NGS">{{cite web |url=https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/features/modern-portrait-showcases-new-ken-currie-painting-and-permanent |title= The Modern Portrait Showcases New Ken Currie Painting |website= National Galleries of Scotland |date=18 December 2023 |access-date=15 January 2025}}</ref> The portrait is on long-term loan to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery and is displayed publicly. The idea for the portrait came to fruition when Currie and Professor Black crossed paths during a BBC Radio 4 programme, ''The Anatomy Lesson'', which featured discussion around the relationship between art and anatomy.<ref name="NGS"/><ref>{{Cite web |title=BBC Radio 4 - The Anatomy Lesson |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0bbp7cc |access-date=2026-01-20 |website=BBC |language=en-GB}}</ref> Following on from this meeting, Currie was invited to Professor Black's workplace at the University of Dundee, where she gave him a tour of the dissection room. The artist was so moved by what he witnessed and encountered, he later asked Professor Black to sit for a portrait.<ref name="NGS"/>
In 2023 Currie shared his studio journals with long-time collaborator and art historian Tom Normand. Normand compiled and edited the content of said journals, which resulted in ''Ken Currie: Paintings and Writings''.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.flowersgallery.com/shop/publications/215-ken-currie-paintings-writings/ |title=Ken Currie: Paintings and Writings |access-date=15 January 2025 |website=Flowers Gallery}}</ref>
Currie was elected to the Royal Scottish Academy in 2024.<ref>{{Cite web |date=12 December 2024 |title=The RSA welcomes four new Members |url=https://www.royalscottishacademy.org/news/42-the-rsa-welcomes-four-new-members/ |access-date=2025-05-04 |website=Royal Scottish Academy |language=en}}</ref>
==Themes and Influences== thumb|''Chimera'', 2010 Currie's paintings show a profound interest in the body (physical and metaphorical) and deeply explores the theme of mortality, which he called a "terror" later in his life.<ref name=SM13/> In a 2021 interview with Tatler Asia Currie says he wants his work "to hover in that [liminal zone] between beauty and horror".<ref name=Tatler/>
A lot of Currie's work features subjects in front of inky, dark backgrounds. This stylistic element has developed while he was studying surgeons and experienced the darkness and spotlight of an operating theater. Currie himself says he wants to depict "something emerging out of darkness" and admits that it has a "theatrical element" to it.<ref name=Tatler/>
In a 2013 interview, Currie named figurative painter Francis Bacon as his "idol". In the same interview he says he "worships" 17th century Spanish painter Diego Velázquez.<ref name=SM13/>
==Bibliography== '''Exhibition Catalogs''' *''Ken Currie: Animals'' [Catalogue of the exhibition held at Flowers 2008] London. *''Ken Currie: Immortality'' [Catalogue of the exhibition held at Flowers 2010] London. *''Ken Currie: Tragic Forms'' [Catalogue of the exhibition held at Flowers 2016] London.
'''Monographs''' * J. Harrison and G. Topp, ''Ken Currie: The Fourth Triptych and Other Works'' Cleveland County Council, 1995. * Ken Currie, ''Ken Currie: Painting & Sculpture'', 1995–96, Panart Publishing Limited, 1996, {{ISBN|1901340007}}. * Tom Normand, ''Ken Currie: Details of a Journey'', Lund Humphries Publishers, 2002, {{ISBN|0853318360}}. * Ken Currie, ''Ken Currie: Paintings and Writings'', Luath Press, 2023 {{ISBN|9781804251270}}.
==References== {{reflist}}
==External links== * [https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/artists/ken-currie Works in the National Galleries of Scotland] * [https://web.archive.org/web/20131024045136/http://www.flowersgallery.com/artists/ken-currie/ Ken Currie's artist page on Flowers Gallery] * {{Art UK bio}}: works by Ken Currie in British public collections {{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Currie, Ken}} Category:1960 births Category:Living people Category:People from North Shields Category:Alumni of the Glasgow School of Art Category:20th-century Scottish painters Category:Scottish male painters Category:21st-century Scottish painters Category:21st-century Scottish male artists Category:20th-century Scottish male artists Category:Royal Scottish Academicians