Christopher Wood, Kilmorack review: 'akin to music'

Christopher Wood: Ancient Songs, Kilmorack Gallery ★★★★

In an 18th century church at Kilmorack just outside Beauly in Inverness-shire, Tony Davidson has now clocked up 27 years of running a contemporary art gallery, and in that time he has built up an enviable stable of mainly Scottish artists.

Currently, the main show at Kilmorack is by Christopher Wood, but there is always a mixture of work in the building including, at the moment, some wonderful animals by Helen Denerley and a group of impressively atmospheric watercolours by Shetland-based Peter Davis.

Detail from Wintry Birds by Christopher Wood | Courtesy of the artist / Kilmorack Gallery

While Davis captures ocean, cliffs and weather with a kind of expressive minimalism, Wood has become, in his later work, a true abstractionist. Questions like “what does it look like?” and “what does it mean?” bounce back unanswered. Yet, seeing a group of his paintings together, one starts to see their structure, the way the colours balance one another, and how thick brush strokes are tempered by finer work.

There is a tension - the good kind - between expressiveness and control, a specificity which comes from persevering at the easel until the thing feels right.

Detail from The Field and the Sea by Christopher Wood | Courtesy of the artist / Kilmorack Gallery

The titles are often poetic: Drop of Dusk, A Corner of the Wind, How Wonderful the Summer Was. And poetry is one way to understand them: like poems, they do not give up their meaning easily, but rather resonate in some mysterious way with the lived experience of the viewer.

Other titles here reference sound: The Noise Grew Softer, A Clatter o’ Birds, Their Voices Fading Away, and there is part of this which is akin to music. After all, the title of the show is Ancient Songs. It strikes a chord, one might say, of a painting one likes. It chimes. It resonates. It’s less about analysis and more about experience. But it’s still all about skill.

Until 12 April