Ian G Miller

Two Dundee artists whose friendship began at art college in the city in the 1960s are getting back together to stage an exhibition of recent work in Dundee University's Botanic Gardens next week.

Ian Miller and Jim Boyd have obviously known each other for many years but it was only after Ian's retirement from his teaching career in 2002 that the impetus towards a joint show began to gather momentum. Ian explained,

We had got together now and again just as friends and colleagues, but I found that during my time in teaching, I didn't feel I had the time or the energy to continue my own painting in any significant way. I've always admired those who didn't let the 'day job' dominate, but for me, it was very much the focus and didn't leave room for much else in the art line.

Apart from family commitments, I got interested in other things, too - singing and playing the saxophone, for example!

Once I retired, however, I was delighted to find that my interest in my own painting began to come to the surface really quite quickly and having met Jim and had a long chat about it, I suggested to him that althought he had shown work pretty regularly, that it might be good to do something together.

He reckoned it was overdue and something we should have done long ago, so after that was decided, we had to get on with it!

Ian is drawn to naturalistic subjects, but also enjoys pattern, colour and the tonal description of objects. His own mentors at college included Alberto Morrocco, Gordon Cameron and David McClure and the Glasgow Boys and Colourists are also strong figures in Ian's artistic development.

He cites the influence of very different masters like Matisse and Manet, especially the latter's figurative compositions which also incorporate another of Ian's interests, elements of still life.

I think I was initially drawn back into painting by this decorative aspect of still life but landscape is definitely beginning to take a stronger role.

The Botanic Gardens exhibition is, therefore, a fascinating mix of two very different approaches, Ian's colourful in oils and pastels, oriented towards still life and landscape and Jim's more abstract, created in that technically detailed etching process perfected over many years. Apart from one or two earlier pieces, the body of what is on show has been created very recently.

Always inspired by travel - during his time at Duncan of Jordanstone, he won a scholarship that took him to London and Paris - Ian finds that wandering around new locations, from Italy to Australia and just absorbing atmosphere, pattern and shape, has a profoundly creative effect on his work.

I think it's almost unconscious what you take in and store away somewhere in your mind. Something just cooks away and eventually produces a picture which might be quite different from the original inspiration. I think it was the artist Paul Klee who said something about a tree not looking like the roots it springs from but being the product of that all the same. I love that idea, that a new image comes from what you see but isn't a copy of it.

Closer to home, he has rediscovered the beauty and diversity of the Carse of Gowrie and reckons there is little better for an artist than when the sun shines on the Scottish landscape, still full of visually undiscovered corners and hidden lanes. "It's the simple things rather than the epic views of mountains and grandeur that attract me at the moment," he maintains.

Now that he has taken up the art materials again, Ian admits to a slight feeling of frustration at possibly running out of time to do everything he wants to, but he reckons it was the right time to start and that his pleasure in and commitment to his work has gathered its own momentum.

When I stopped working, a store of unpainted pictures came back into the front of my mind and the stream hasn't stopped yet. It's like a 38-year interruption to my painting life is now over and things are developing with a vengeance!

The odd spasmodic impulse to paint, during the summer holiday, for example, has turned into a permanent drive to paint. Now, I can't overstate it - the day is yours to do with as you like and I'm delighted that so much is coming out of it.

The exhibition runs in Dundee University Botanic Gardens from August 5-13 2006