Through the Letterbox: George Bruce and Elizabeth Blackadder
Until April 16; City Art Centre, Edinburgh

“What is a haiku? A haiku – a single breath, that breathes with the river”. So wrote George Bruce, eminent poet of the Scottish Literary Renaissance, and a self-confessed haiku-addict up until his death in 2002. In preparation for a collection of the seventeen-syllable poems, Bruce would often scribble them down on the nearest bit of paper he could find, and pop them, one at a time, through his editor’s letterbox.

Meanwhile Elizabeth Blackadder, the much-loved painter of flowers, cats and delicate objects, was working on illustrations for the book. A daddy-long-legs would land on the wall in front of her and she’d catch its delicate form in biro before it lurched away.

Now, like the insect, a little exhibition has wafted into a stairwell at the City Art Centre and landed on its walls. The fleeting gems from Bruce, and the quiet moments of Blackadder’s inspiration, are collected together in a few simple frames. Haikus appear on napkins, postcards and little scraps of paper, along with little drawings and watercolours from Blackadder.

You get the sense that Bruce’s haikus wafted into his mind from some small thing outside of himself, and so do Blackadder’s sketches: a little leaf, the way a cat sits, a bird swooping. If you look away, they’ll be gone, the moment passed. The slightly amateurish assembly of the exhibition, the little bits of paper puckering in their frames, serves to underline the intimate, transient nature of it all.

A glass cabinet full of oriental trinkets, chestnuts, shells and plastic fish is undeniably twee, but spotting its contents in Blackadder’s sketches, you see them in new light. The artist has always been an avid collector of objects, and in her hands a plastic berry can become a delicate delight in perfect balance with the world.

Though Bruce was in his early nineties, with a book of collected works already behind him, he didn’t stop writing. He was still sharp, and his humour comes through in the hand-written notes addressed to his editor. “Lucina,” says one, “Had an enjoyable time at the dentist. G.” Now there’s a man who could find inspiration in anything.

Catrìona Black, Sunday Herald 27.02.05