Jock McFadyen (Hardcover)

The product of extensive interviews with the artist, this publication provides the definitive guide to the work of Jock McFadyen RA. The architecture critic Rowan Moore creates a fascinating portrait of the artist, weaving together stories from McFadyen's life - from burning an effigy of his principal and being thrown out of college to a residency at the National Gallery and election to the Royal Academy in 2012 - with an in-depth analysis of his art. McFadyen's story begins in 1950s Scotland, moving via squats in Chelsea during the punk era, to the East End of London, now the subject of many of his large-scale landscapes. Moore explores McFadyen's decision to 'believe in painting' in the face of artists who appeared to seek financial reward before all else, and the inspiration he takes from a wide range of artists, including James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) and Walter Sickert (1860-1942). This publication celebrates an important contemporary painter, and is generously illustrated with a selection of McFadyen's works - including Tate Moss, a painting derived from an illicit kayak trip along the canal into London's future Olympic Park, and his recent depictions of a gargantuan moon hanging above Edinburgh.