Childhood play site spawns success

A YOUNG Scottish artist who paints pictures of the overgrown estate where he played as a child has been named as the winner of the UK's largest privately funded art prize.

Calum McClure's paintings of Cammo Estate on the outskirts of Edinburgh, where he was taken to look for tadpoles as a boy, have won him the 25,000 top prize in the Jolomo Bank of Scotland Awards 2011 for Scottish landscape painting.

McClure, 24, who graduated from Edinburgh College of Art a year ago, received his prize from the founder of the awards, the artist John Lowrie Morrison, at a gala dinner at Kelvingrove Museum last night, with First Minister Alex Salmond in attendance.

Two further awards were made to runners-up, Beth Robertson Fiddes, 38, from Edinburgh, who won 6,000, and Katie Pope, 26, from Glasgow, winning 4,000.

McClure, who has been working as a chef to pay the bills since finishing art college, described the prize as "just amazing". "This will allow me to concentrate on painting. It's a great thing that John (Lowrie Morrison] does, to give away so much."

Morrison, who launched the Awards in 2006 to encourage emerging artists to paint the Scottish landscape, said: "Calum is an extremely talented young man showing not only skill as a draughtsman but also an inspiring take on the landscape. My feeling is that he will go a long way, and the award will help him along."

Mr Salmond said: "The beauty of Scotland's landscape has been captured in many art forms it is therefore right and fitting that we have these wonderful awards."