Sean Scully: Iona
Until June 19; Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh

Iona will always be, for many art enthusiasts, the world of Scottish Colourists, SJ Peploe and FCB Cadell. The two artists spent dozens of summers at North End beach, capturing the ever-changing light of the shining sands and vibrant seas. Iona was, for them, a zingy palette of turquoise, violet and pink. Light jumps out of their oil paintings, and so, almost, does the invigorating Atlantic breeze.

A very different Iona is suggested by Sean Scully’s new exhibition at Ingleby Gallery. The centre-piece of the show is a monumental triptych called Iona, consisting of two stone-coloured canvasses flanking a central patchwork dominated by earthy reds. The large canvases suck up the light; they are mossy, thunderous, slow-burning giants from a world entirely different to the Colourists’ Iona.

Scully, Irish-born and London-bred, is one of the last of a dying breed: a Modernist with enduring faith in abstract expressionism. Gestural patchworks of colour, carefully built up in irregular chequerboard patterns, are all he needs to convey deep emotion. He paints wet into wet until he feels he has reached a conclusion. Then comes the title.

This triptych wasn’t named until after it was finished. Scully had visited Iona 15 years earlier as part of a Hebridean tour, and the paintings, once done, stirred that memory in him. Too much might be made, perhaps, of the connection.

Downstairs though, a selection of the artist’s photographs, printed at unprecedented scale, does seem to make sense of Scully’s train of thought. They were taken during that island tour, in Harris and Lewis (which is as near as we get to Iona). There is no sea and sky; no great expanse of space; just close-cropped, full-frontal walls.

Every flat surface is textured, whether it’s rusting corrugated iron, peeling whitewash, or lichen-covered stone. Every wall is punctuated in perfect harmony with patched-up boards, doors and windows. The grey-blue of stone is mixed with the earthy reds of paint and rust, and there we have the inspiration for Iona.

Richard Ingleby has a talent for letting us in on artists’ secrets; when he showed plant prints from Ellsworth Kelly’s personal collection, the penny dropped. The photographs this time are a perfect way into Scully’s work. They are, for me (though it feels blasphemous to say it), the real stars of this show.

I use the word blasphemous advisedly. Triptychs are altarpieces, traditionally. It is almost as if we are expected to worship at the altar of the blessed Iona work, with its gallery to itself, and the 12 small copper triptychs downstairs, lined up, polished, like sacred icons. I failed to drop to my knees in the presence of these paintings, but the photographs did open my weary, postmodern eyes.

Catrìona Black, Sunday Herald 02.05.10