Raising the ordinary to become anything but

Jack Knox trained at Glasgow School of Art and spent 20 years teaching at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design in Dundee before returning to his alma mater in 1981 when appointed head of painting.

Knox, who died in 2015 at the age of 78, has a formidable reputation as an artist and a teacher and it seems apt that this show, presently one of two major tributes in Glasgow, should be held in a gallery that supported his work for more than 50 years and is a short distance from the smoking ruins of the Mackintosh building, an institution with which he is so inextricably linked.

His work in oil, acrylic, pastel, charcoal, gouache and other media can appear deceptively simple, partly because his motifs and subjects are, apparently, so visually available. This collection, which ranges from the early 1960s until around the time of his death, is strewn with representations of the domestic and the familiar — a watering can, asparagus, flotsam and jetsam, cheese, pears, bread, cars, trees and birds.

But Knox painted in a variety of styles, often dictated by the media he employed but also by his life experiences, the places he visited and artists with whom he felt strong bonds. An early work, from the mid-1960s painted in the then relatively new medium of PVA, is a tribute to and acknowledgement of the Italian painter Paolo Uccello. The Battle of San Romano I references the Renaissance master’s work, which depicts a battle between the Sienese and Florentine armies. It was a revelation to Knox, seeing Uccello’s painting up close and freshly restored, that it was not “static” but involved a temporal, as well as a spatial, array of events.

In Knox’s version there’s no real pictorial link to Uccello. Instead, Knox takes the energy which moves the eye around the original and provides symbols and objects that make use of the same process. There’s no obvious centre to the painting and no apparent narrative. There’s a hint of a domestic interior and a painting within a painting, and various semi-abstracted shapes which, like Uccello, provoke the eye to create a structure.

A trip to the Netherlands in the 1970s changed Knox’s direction and he began painting large, well-finished, detailed colourful works, such as Cheese Still Life, influenced by the culinary and artistic habits of the Dutch. There is a group of small, untitled, nearly abstract works in oil, which Knox painted in his 20s near the beginning of his artistic journey. The closest comparison one can make is with Willem de Kooning – Knox has a similar energy and palette. They presage his ambition and achievement.

To July 28. Call 0141 221 3095