VISUAL ART
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VICTORIA CROWE: BEYOND LIKENESS Major retrospective from a portrait painter of distinction
Victoria Crowe is one of the i nest painters working in Scotland today. An artist of great subtlety and depth, this major exhibition at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery specii cally reminds us of her importance as a portrait painter. Bringing together 54 paintings and drawings
which span more than 30 years, it shows us not only how important portraiture is to her practice, but what a signii cant body of work she has produced. The people we i nd here are eminent
scientists, physicians, writers and composers. But this provides a challenge for the artist: how do you portray people, often middle-aged or elderly – and conservatively dressed – in
a way which captures the liveliness of their inner worlds? Crowe does this in a variety of ways from colours and poses to carefully chosen objects and books, and even through landscapes glimpsed out of a window. As her work matures, she grows more
ambitious, layering past and present, inner and outer worlds like a palimpsest. By the time she completed her 2017 portrait of Professor Timothy O’Shea (the former principal of Edinburgh University), she was also incorporating person and place, public and private, man and work in the same picture: he is an eminent computer scientist, so a robot is included. There is much to delight in such as the portraits of herself and her family, and three
from the much-loved ‘Shepherd’s Life’ series, inspired by her neighbour, Jenny Armstrong. As an artist fascinated by the workings of the mind, she’s drawn to those who have explored them. Figures such as psychiatrist RD Laing and psychoanalyst Dr Winifred Rushforth are examples of this, as well as the poet Kathleen Raine, whom she paints with her eyes averted while memories, images and words come alive in a mirror beside her. Crowe is mindful, always, of the things a portrait can’t capture, the elusive essences of a person which escape even the most gifted of artists. (Susan Mansi eld) ■ Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, until Sun 18 Nov ●●●●●
1 Jun–31 Aug 2018 THE LIST 115
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