George Somerville
Cheery, breezy and upbeat in the main, contemporary landscape and figurative artist, George Somerville’s keynote paintings capture the very essence of the working man of yore; only at rest and play rather than their place of labour. From walking the dog and riding his bike, to flying kites and constructing shed-built go-karts, Somerville has successfully caught many touching and insightful, warm and sometimes fuzzy, yet always deeply illustrative moments in time through his acutely-depicted, generation-embracing compositions. To the trained eye there is undoubtedly a degree of Alexander Millar-esque pictorial love letters to an almost forgotten and neglected age present and graphically correct within the very fabric of Somerville’s pseudo-whimsical visual content and both physical and emotive perspective.
Born and raised in a tough, working-class area of Glasgow during the 1950s, the sights, sounds and smells of heavy industry hung large in the immediate air and punctuated every street panorama; be they foundries, factories or the omnipresent steelworks which characterised these city quarters during this favourable period and homespun industrial climate of then and there. And Somerville found himself in the thick of it, taking in everything he witnessed, which eventually would serve as the perfect back catalogue to dip in and out of at will when circumnavigating his future canvases and sculptures which focussed very much on men folk at ease, making the most of their down time away from the disciplined shift work that marked out their working life.
Born in 1947, Somerville’s father was a foundry worker himself, and the family as a whole had to watch their purse strings, with luxuries being something of a rarity. Therefore Somerville didn’t attend art college straight away, due to financial constraints at that particular time; however he did attend in 1965. The establishment where Somerville further developed and evolved his creative talent was the prestigious and acknowledged, Glasgow School of Art, which has seen its fair share of big name artists pass through its doors during its time.
Home to Somerville is nowadays in the small fishing village on Scotland’s east coast, having spent the majority of his life residing and working out of Glasgow. The much sought after artist’s signature works hang from a host of both private and corporate collections across the world, quite literally from the south of France to the north of Canada and beyond.
