Industrial heritage is celebrated in colours

John Taylor, who celebrates his 80th birthday this year, worked for many years as a printmaker at Glasgow Print Studios. His work is closely associated with screen-printing. Here, in a series of works completed in the past ten years, he shows that he is equally adept as a watercolourist.

This medium is traditionally associated with landscape, seascape and still lifes. Its essence is rurality, the pastoral and a kind of softness of vision which the thinness and delicacy of paint somehow engenders.

It is less often associated with urbanism and the depiction of cityscapes and post-industrial structures. It is therefore a mark of the confidence and experience that Taylor lends to the medium that these scenes of canals, flats, city doocots, railways and pylons seem so convincing and so appropriate.

There is something quietly celebratory about these images. They do not suggest decline, but rather a sense of spirit of place, born of affection and familiarity. Although they are devoid of human figures they are full of the impact of human presence. The doocots of Ruchill and Partick, which line the Forth and Clyde Canal, are tall, distinctive structures made from improvised materials. They are celebrated as part of the city’s architectural heritage.

It is difficult to conceive of electricity pylons or blocks of high-rise flats as structures that should be admired. Yet in Taylor’s hands the delicacy of his medium somehow transforms these from threatening imposition to welcoming components of a real, all-encompassing vision.

For those who miss the rural, there are scenes of a Highland village and fields and farmland surrounding the West Highland Way. Although skilful and pleasing these images do not have the impact of the scenes that Taylor depicts from his home patch.

To Sept 18: glasgowprintstudio.co.uk