Analysis: Brave insight into Billy Connolly’s serious side

THIS suite of works offers an interesting insight into aspects of Billy Connolly’s personality, his sense of the ridiculous and, I think, his awareness and interest in what it means to be a human being.

He is inviting people to know his private world, to share his deep questioning of what it means to be him.

It is obviously very personal work, and all of the images seem to pose questions, but they are not giving any answers.

But this work is not going to cause you to laugh, it’s going to question your capacity to ask questions about what it means to be human.

He is not attempting, as the king of stand-up comics, to provoke laughter, and he seems to have found it necessary to move into the language of the visual arts to put down deeply felt emotions about a world that is not clear-cut to him.

The art world is going to say that this is outsider art, and as an expression of Scottish art, the nearest I can think of is Scottie Wilson, who also used pen and ink, I think he has been very brave, there’s no defence in these images, there are very personal emotions on show.

He has made these works seriously, with a serious intent and they are going to have to be considered properly, because they will become part of the image we have of him.

These are not doodles, they are serious pieces and they reveal something that many people cover up.