Ben Luke

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Hello, I'm Ben Luke and welcome to A Brush With, the podcast from The Art Newspaper in which I talk to artists about their influences from writers to musicians and of course other artists and the cultural experiences that have shaped their lives and work.

And this episode is A Brush With Andrew Cranston.

Before I continue, look out for a video version of this interview on the YouTube channels of The Art Newspaper and Bloomberg Connects.

Andrew Cranston's works draw on experiences, moments seen, felt or remembered, which are filtered, embellished, complicated and sometimes almost obliterated through the process of being painted.

As well as reflecting on personal events from childhood memories and the recollections of family members to more recent rituals and exploits,

Andy's pictures are rich in cultural resonance.

Images and ideas from the history of art and cinema, from poems and television series, are central to his work, whether as a core motif or as a subtle reference in the title.

As a result, his practice is deeply concerned with time and history, not just in recalling past events and experiences and transforming them in the present, but in his materials and methods.

he often uses the covers of old hardback books bleached by light over the years as a surface for instance and the paintings hold time in their very physicality in the immediacy of a painted gesture in the steady build-up of layers and marks and in the hints of their journeys to completion

Andy's paintings reflect his medium's capacity for thrillingly diverse effects, modes and moods.

They are full of poetry and longing, as well as absurdity and joy.

Andy was born in 1969 in Hawick in Scotland, and the places and spaces of Hawick appear frequently, whether in images recalling his family home growing up or the golf course there, which he's painted on several occasions, including in a recent painting called I Thought I Saw an Eagle from 2026.

He studied at Manchester Polytechnic and the Grays School of Art in Aberdeen in Scotland and then gained an MA at the Royal College of Art in London where he first met the painter Peter Doig who was a visiting tutor and has proved an important influence.

In 1997 he moved to Glasgow where he continues to live today.

From 1999, he returned to Gray's School of Art to begin teaching there, a process he credits with making him examine more deeply the idea of being an artist and, as he put it, to articulate intellectually and practically what had been mainly intuitive until then.

But while he occasionally showed his work, this was largely a period of what Andy himself has described as anonymity.

Only in the past 15 years or so has he shown more frequently and to widespread interest.