Ken Currie Self Portrait, March, 2012

Scottish artist Ken Currie is renowned for his unsettling portrayal of the human figure, articulated in rich, hyper realistic paintings that often depict mysterious rites, rituals and quasi-medical practices, offering a meditation on violence and its many guises. This self-portrait is characteristic of Currie’s evocative, luminous depictions of flesh, as his figures often appear to omit a spectral glow.

Ken Currie was born in 1960, and studied at the Glasgow School of Art from 1978 - 1983. He rose to attention as one of the New Glasgow Boys along with Peter Howson, Adrian Wisniewski and the late Steven Campbell who studied together at the Glasgow School of Art.  He is well known for his public murals commissioned for the People’s Palace in Glasgow, as well as his enduringly popular artwork from the Scottish National Portrait Gallery Collection Three Oncologists, representing a life-long study of the fragility of the human condition. His large-scale portrait of preeminent forensic anthropologist Professor Dame Sue Black went on view at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in May 2021. Currie has exhibited widely internationally, including a solo exhibition at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery; and has been selected for numerous group shows including The Scottish Endarkenment: Art and Unreason, 1945 to Present at Dovecot Gallery, Edinburgh, 2016; Reality, Modern & Contemporary British Painting at The Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich and Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool; and Drawing Breath, a touring exhibition marking ten years of the Jerwood Drawing Prize. His work is in the collections of Yale Centre for British Art, Connecticut; Tate, London; Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh; New York Public Library; Imperial War Museum, London; Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon; Campbelltown City Bicentennial Art Gallery, Australia; British Council, London; Boston Museum of Fine Art; and ARKEN, Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen.