GAZING OUT THROUGH THE grimy window of a Glasgow bus, you might glimpse Jackie Anderson with her camera melting into the gloom. Or you might not notice her at all, which is how she likes it.
Taking snapshots on the street and at bus stops is the only way Anderson has found of getting the source material she needs, pictures of faces which are genuinely unguarded, passers-by wrapped up in their own thoughts. They then become the building b
locks for her acclaimed figurative paintings.
Anderson, 35, is a graduate of the Masters course at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in Dundee. She was awarded the Alastair Salvesen Scholarship at the RSA in 2007, and this year was a finalist for the new Threadneedle Figurative Prize. Her work has been selected several times for the BP Portrait Exhibition.
In her Glasgow studio, she explains how she has become fascinated by the play of reflections in bus windows, which has provided the material for a short exhibition opening tomorrow at the Dundas Street Gallery in Edinburgh.
"I like the idea that while people on the bus move through the space, people are reflected on the surface," she says. "People who would never have crossed paths naturally overlap visually just for a second. I'm really drawn to that moment when complete strangers, absorbed in their own thoughts, cross over each other for a split second. But it does mean I've had to spend time hanging around with my camera at bus stops."
Even if people notice her they don't seem to mind, she says.
"At first it does feel like you're breaking some kind of social rule, but even if someone asks me what I'm doing, they're usually just interested and quite excited that they might be in a painting. I'm intrigued that one day I'm going to meet someone I've painted, but it hasn't happened yet."
Once someone knows a camera is pointed at them, they will immediately act differently, she says. "I used to paint my friends. I'd see someone doing something interesting and as soon as I put a camera in front of them their body language would change, even their breathing changed; it became much more self-conscious."
Wandering through town, or sitting on a bus, however, can be a very private moment. "Sometimes I'm absorbed in my own thoughts and I see my reflection and catch myself out. I think you see yourself more realistically than if you decided to look in the mirror – maybe as other people see you."
Transient faces and reflections are ideally suited to Anderson's subtle, muted palette. "I like to reduce things down, allow other people to fill in the gaps. That's what I'm drawn to in other people's work, room to add your own interpretation." She loves Vermeer, the stillness of the captured moment, the quiet light, the imagined story behind a painting.
Anderson describes herself as "self-taught". She did a degree in sociology at Aberdeen University, though she always loved painting, and went to Duncan of Jordanstone as a postgraduate in 1999 after exhibiting for several years in art clubs and open submission shows. Art was always around in her family – her mother and stepfather are both artists, as is her sister, with whom she shares a studio.
"Art school was great, it was just what I needed, it really broadened my horizons," she says. "I had time to develop, make lots of mistakes, go up a few blind alleys." Her first solo show, with Amber Roome Contemporary Art in Edinburgh in 2005, was warmly received. In the new show, she is paired with Andrew Mackenzie, whose delicate unpopulated urban landscapes promise to complement her figurative images.
When she won the RSA £10,000 Salvesen Scholarship, she used it to travel to Trinidad where her mother grew up. "I thought it would be interesting because my paintings are so Scottish in palette and mood. I wanted to see what would happen in the Caribbean where you have such a completely different physical and social environment."
Again she took photographs on the street, though the reaction there was rather different. "Lots of people asked me what I was doing, and a lot more specifically wanted to be in a picture. I had people walking past several times to make sure that they really got captured."
She produced a series of beautiful studies of local people waiting for shared taxis (the cheapest way to get around) and developed several outstanding larger works. for three months she had a studio on the island in arts centre CCA7, the same building as Peter Doig. "You'd be talking to him over lunch and say: 'What are you working on?' and he'd say: 'An exhibition for the Tate.' That's not usually the response you get when you're making small talk with other artists."
The difference between her Trinidad paintings and her Glasgow work is a subtle one. "It wasn't until I got the work home that I could see it. In Scottish light, they looked so much warmer. I learned a lot there – how to make looser work on a smaller scale. It freed me up a lot. I've carried on working in the same way since."
• Jackie Anderson and Andrew Mackenzie will show new work with Amber Roome Contemporary Art at the Dundas Street Gallery, Edinburgh, 9-12 November.
What people are saying"Near transparent washes of paint record these people passing by lost in their own thoughts; otherwise banal, forgotten moments of everyday life are transformed into striking, evocative images."
Scottish Art News
"A rare blend of accessibility ... and a complex, subtle set of conceptual concerns."
Herald
"She knows, like a writer, that the right descriptive detail makes a character breathe."
The Scotsman
