Bold abstracts deserve to make a bigger splash

Dennis Buchan, who was born in 1937 in Arbroath and continues to live and work in the east coast fishing town, is an artist whose work deserves to be better known. Buchan’s relative obscurity may simply be a function of his humility and a dislike of self-promotion; certainly, it has nothing to do with his painterly talent, which is as deep as it is broad.

Inhabitants of Arbroath are often referred to as “reid lichties” because of the flashing light at the harbour mouth and it’s a moniker he is proud to adopt. It’s no accident that Buchan has had a studio in that location throughout his long career, because the colours, sounds, smells and atmosphere of this busy, bustling environment feed into his painting; indeed, they are the essence of his work and the key to understanding his bold, exciting, abstracted imagery.

His titles are full of these resonances: Shore Music, Quay Quartet, Seagate, Café Sounds near the Shore.

The rather quirky and confined basement of this gallery seems barely able to contain the energy and vibrancy of these works. Tapas Variado really zings with joie devivre, despite or even because of, a characteristic use of black, which is pitted to great effect against blues, yellows, oranges and greens. Indeed, Buchan shares much in this respect with his colleague, the late Jack Knox, who also taught at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in Dundee.

Buchan began using acrylic paints soon after they were first introduced in the mid-Sixties and the new, fast-drying paints, which were capable of greater colour vibrancy, suited his style. Buchan works with an impassioned impatience, and often applies one colour on top of another so that it’s often possible to see the sequential progress in his work.

If there is disappointment here, it’s that there are not more of Buchan’s paintings to enjoy — although it’s billed as a retrospective, the most recent canvas dates from 2006. It would be good to see an additional 16 years’ worth of Buchan’s work

Until 21 October