Scotsman Obituaries: Andrew Hay, Glasgow-born artist whose paintings of the 1984 miners’ strike brought wide acclaim

Andrew Hay's lack of formal art training didn't hold him back from success

Although he was many things in life, it was as an artist that Andrew Hay wanted to be remembered. Andy, as he was known to almost everyone, was passionate about art: making it, reading about it, talking about it. Painting, he would say, was the career for which he was destined – although it took him a few decades to get there.

Becoming a full-time artist in his forties, Andy pursued art with the natural, vigorous energy he brought to most things, teaching himself by studying art history books and seeking out his own opportunities. As a self-taught artist, his achievements were considerable, and he never stopped experimenting. He was making new work in new ways even in the final months of his life.

Andy was born in 1944 in Camlachie, Glasgow, to James and Bridget. He had one sister, Anne. He later described growing up in the East End in the 1940s and 1950s as “an education in survival”, but took delight from an early age in making marks with pencils and paints. He remembered being taken to task at school for sketching scenes from films in his jotters.

At secondary school he found joy in art classes with a teacher, Calum Sinclair, who nurtured his talent. Every Sunday, Andy would walk with his father to one of Glasgow’s museums – often the ten-mile round trip from the East End to Kelvingrove, where he always spent time admiring his favourite painting, Rembrandt’s A Man in Armour.

Like many from the East End at the time, Andy left school at 15 without qualifications, working in a variety of jobs before becoming a lorry driver for the Co-op. By 21 he was married to his first wife, Susan, and they would become proud parents to Gavin and Suzanne. The family settled in Cumbernauld.

Andy would later say that he continued to carry “a great unfulfilled need to paint”. He started painting again at the age of 38, driving a lorry by day and studying art books in the evenings. As a shop steward for the TGWU, he delivered food parcels to the picket lines during the miners’ strike and this inspired him to document the strike in paintings. A series of ten of his miners’ strike paintings were bought by curator Elspeth King at Glasgow’s People’s Palace – his first major breakthrough.

His work as a painter of social realism was being noticed, and his first solo exhibition at the Briggait in Glasgow in 1986 was a sell-out. He painted the Glasgow he knew: tenements, steamies, washing hanging in back courts, and people loved it. But he also knew he wanted to work with bigger themes. In 1990 Glasgow was European City of Culture and it proved an important year for Andy. Having left lorry driving to paint full time, he managed to get funding to set up a series of seven residency projects at Glasgow libraries, painting a large-scale work about each area. The paintings were exhibited together in the Mitchell Library at the end of the year, attracting the attention of Channel 4’s Box Office, and praise from Scotland on Sunday art critic W Gordon Smith.

Andy was aware that as a working-class man with no formal training, the odds were stacked against him in the art world. Although he was turned away from one Glasgow art gallery because he had not been to art school, his energy and determination were undiminished. He continued to make ambitious work, channelling his anger at the first Iraq war and the war in Bosnia into large-scale paintings about conflict and man’s inhumanity to man.

At the age of 50 he took another courageous step and gained a place at Stirling University to study Film & Media Studies and Politics. He loved studying, and graduating with an honours degree in 1997 was one of his proudest moments. He took all he had learned and ploughed it into his art.

In exhibitions such as Moving Pictures That Now Stand Still (2001) at the People’s Palace, and Dreams Memories and Nightmares (2003) at Motherwell Heritage Centre, he was experimenting with new forms of painting, working with complex themes. His painting Estado da Gracia – Portrait of Shuggy, a portrait of a disabled man inspired by El Greco, was shown at the University of Dundee in 2009 beside works by John Byrne and John Bellany.

The MacRobert Art Centre at Stirling University hosted an exhibition of his war-themed paintings. Valerie Fairweather, collections curator from the University of Stirling, wrote: “His work and commitment thus far combine innate skill, power, passion and altruism, but above all show a single-minded determination to express himself visually through an ever-widening range of visual media.”

He was always ready for a fresh challenge, and never short of ideas. He painted a bus to be used in outreach work to young people in Airdrie and Coatbridge, and a 45-foot long mural for Chapelside Primary School in Airdrie. In his own painting, in shows such as Form and Narrative in an Age of Desire (2015), he started to explore a pop art style, deconstructing classic movie posters and images of film stars.

Jacqui Wallace, who was Andy’s partner for the last 19 years of his life, had a great love of travel which combined with Andy’s love of art. The couple enjoyed trips to world-class museums in Europe and the USA. Andy and Jacqui married in 2022.

Andy never stopped learning, and never stopped pushing his art in new directions. When he died he was working on an exhibition for The Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum, Darkness on the Edge of Democracy, marking 40 years since the miners’ strike. The show, which went ahead in March at his request, included photocollages and conceptual works made using coal, sacks and pigment, new mediums he was exploring.

Andy is survived by Jacqui, children Gavin and Suzanne, and four grandchildren. His work is in public and private collections, including Glasgow Museums, Glasgow City Chambers, Glasgow Caledonian University, Dundee Museums, Stirling University and the Stirling Smith Art Gallery & Museum.

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