Interview: Joyce Gunn - Quick on the draw

Published on Wednesday 8 July 2009 20:11

OVER the past 20 years the Scottish artist Joyce Gunn Cairns has approached a string of top Scottish writers, asking them to sit for a rapid sketched portrait. The results, the 60-year-old artist admits, can be hit and miss.

But an extraordinary selection of 39 of her portraits goes on show today. With the backing of a newly revived Edinburgh gallery, the artist has drawn leading names in Scottish literature and life, from the broadcaster Sally Magnusson to the hairdressing chain boss Charlie Miller.

Portrait artists often work for hours with sitters, over several days. Gunn Cairns – whose work is in the collection of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery – uses coloured pencils to execute a portrait in about an hour.

With some, like that of the writer AL Kennedy, or the poet Edwin Morgan, she seems to have captured a character. With others, like former Hearts captain Steven Pressley, she is the first to admit it's a bit hit and miss. "This is a mixed bag," she said, with surprising frankness. "Most of them are good, some of them are lovely. The one of Edwin Morgan is very lovely. One or two of them are not good. With Steven Pressley, I only got one sitting, he's a busy man, he was sitting with his children around him; it's not the best drawing."

Since the 1960s Gunn Cairns has been a customer at the legendary Henderson's Restaurant in the New Town. The building also housed a gallery in the 1970s and 80s, and last year the Henderson family revived the idea, turning back room offices into an exhibition space for contemporary art.

"She saw the gallery had opened up, came in and gave me a card. We get tons of people coming in every week, but Joyce as a character, as a personality, is a bit of a tour de force," said Henderson Gallery director Peter Warburton. The gallery has already created a stir, with its recent exhibition of the graffiti artist Elph.

If she can, Gunn Cairns likes to return several times to her sitters, creating a series of sketches. This exhibition shows just one picture of each.

She relishes her encounters with the people she draws, she says, as much as creating the artwork, and many of her sitters seem to agree. The poet Stuart Conn said sitting for her was "a conversational treat in itself; it can prove revelatory in enabling us to 'see oursels as ithers see us'".

Gunn Cairns graduated from Edinburgh College of Art as an older student in the early 1980s, a divorced mother of two young children. She kept a part-time job as an art technician at an Edinburgh private school until recently.

"It's been very, very hard, and if nothing sells tonight I will be miserable, because I've got to do my job like anyone else," she said. "You never have any guaranteed income ever." The pictures, including self-portraits made with a mirror, sell for about 900.

Gunn Cairns has drawn Richard Holloway, the writer, former Bishop of Edinburgh, and chairman of the Scottish Arts Council, several times over the past few years. One session was filmed for a BBC Scotland programme. "I love his books," she said. She has made no secret of her struggle for depression. Mr Holloway suggested her "emotional honesty" was the secret of her power as an artist. "She holds nothing of herself back … this gives her work a disturbing rawness."

The exhibition includes a documentary by the young film-maker Johanna Wagner, about the artist and her struggle with depression, called The Inner Shape. It won a New Talent award from Bafta Scotland.

"Joyce's work has a very tentative mark, but it's full of energy, and there's something about it that's very immediate," said Mr Warburton. "At one moment she's very in your face, a real personality to reckon with, but she's got self-doubt about her work."

For years, Cairns approached writers, sometimes directly or through agents or publishers, asking them to sit. "It's just because I've got a brass neck. I've been drawing people for 20 years. It's always writers, musicians, and poets. I'm a frustrated writer, and have a great passion for literature."

About five years ago she was offered an exhibition in Edinburgh's Writers Museum, and was subsequently asked to draw the No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency author, Alexander McCall Smith. Last year she got a first paid commission, to draw the sculptor Ronald Rae. "Each time it's a different experience," she said. "It takes me about an hour."

The Henderson Gallery backed Gunn Cairns to cover much wider ground. Her subjects, all drawn from life, include Glasgow culture chief Bridget McConnell, the entrepreneur Sir Tom Farmer, award-winning writer Ali Smith and musician Aly Bain. Almost all were drawn over the last three or four months.

Gunn Cairns has had pictures shown in Germany and work in an exhibition on Scottish poets, curated by the portrait gallery, toured to Europe. "I feel my profile is rising, and this is certainly helping," she said.

Gunn Cairns prefers to do a series rather than the single portraits that appear in this show. She has told friends she is not that happy with the likeness of Sally Magnusson. Over the years there are people – a few of them – who've turned her down. The writers Julian Barnes and Janice Galloway said no. She has drawn the actor and writer Simon Callow, however – though that portrait is not in the exhibition.

The sitters for the show include the veteran Scottish writer Alasdair Gray. "I've been reading his books as a result, I always read the writers I draw. Literature is my passion." She has lodged her correspondence with several writers over recent decades with the National Library of Scotland.

Scottish National Portrait Gallery senior curator Julie Lawson said of her work: "For Gunn Cairns, it is not drawing for its own sake that matters – rather, the drawing process is a form of dialogue with another. The portrait drawing is what emerges.

"Her skill, perception and empathy produce portraits that do not render just the surface of appearance, but tell a truth about the spirit of each of her brief encounters and seek a truth within the observer herself."

Gunn Cairns begun to make a living as an artist. "It's been consistent. I sell work, but at a constant trickle. It's enough to subsist. I've always sacrificed everything from my work, apart from my children," she said.

The Scotsman art critic Duncan MacMillan was among the sitters. He worked with Gunn Cairns on an exhibition of her multiple drawings of David Daiches, the Scottish historian and literary critic.

He said: "It is quite an interesting enterprise to bring together a collection of portraits like that which are not bland. She does try to get at something about a person, which makes it an interesting collection.

"She likes to do a series. If you think about the whole question of what is a likeness, a series of images is nearer to a sense of a sitter than just one."

SITTING PRETTY?

What they thought of sitting for Joyce...

Richard Holloway, author

Strangely enough, sitting for Joyce has taught me a lot about myself. When we first started years ago, I grudged the time, being incessantly busy, and carried on writing at my computer while Joyce sketched. Something she said made me realise that I was being ungenerous, not only with my time, but with myself: I was not truly present for her, not really taking part. Being drawn, I came to understand, was an exercise in mutuality, for which the sitter had to make himself emotionally as well as physically available.

I think this emotional honesty is the secret of Joyce's power as an artist. She holds nothing of herself back, especially in her more personal, autobiographical paintings. This gives her work a disturbing rawness that challenges the viewer, as well as the sitter, to a similar level of truth.

Sally Magnusson, broadcaster

I wasn't looking forward to sitting for a portrait. To be honest, I thought I would be bored. Bored? Little did I know. It was high-octave entertainment all the way.

Archie Macpherson, broadcaster

You don't passively "sit" for Joyce. You are interviewed. The current of unending conversation as she sketches is reflected in the strokes of the portrait, which are like punctuation marks in your life story. The mix of evident vitality with the undisguisable signs of the erosion of age do seem to remind myself, if no others, that I lived in the turmoil of the media jetstream for longer than I imagined I would. She teases out of you anecdotes which I think aid her in portraying something that reminds me of Shakespeare's remark in Macbeth: "There's no art/ To find the mind's construction, in the face." Joyce's work seems to repudiate that.

Mark Lazarowicz, politician

The sittings with Joyce were a great opportunity to talk about all the issues of the day, big and small, local and global – ranging from recycling in West Pilton, ethics, religion and morality, the changing ethnic mix in Edinburgh, parenthood, and even the Labour Party!

Mark Cousins, film director

My sittings with Joyce, at 7:30 in the morning, were a fizzy start to the day. Her chat made the hour go in minutes. How can she be such fun to talk to and produce art at the same time. She thought I looked craggy. I thought she had a touch of Barbara Stanwyck about her.

Jamie Andrew, mountaineer

I am usually utterly unaware that I am being drawn when sitting for Joyce. She is such a charming person, hugely interesting and curious about life, and, of course, a complete blether. The whole experience is just like coffee and a chat, and it is always a surprise to realise that all the while she is crafting one of her amazing and, of course, brutally honest portraits.

Alexander McCall Smith, author

Sitting for Joyce Gunn Cairns is always pure pleasure. The conversation flows and the sitter always ends up better informed and more cheerful at the end of the session.