Christine Woodside RSW RGI - Out and About

In the mid-1990s, when we first started dealing, the London Market was alive with interest in Scottish art; a rather vague, catch-all phrase that encompassed a stylistically diverse collection of twentieth century artists then being rediscovered by the market. The New Glasgow Boys school of figurative painters dominated British art, Anne Redpath and Joan Eardley suddenly entered the investment art category and the Colourists were making so much, that when the financial crash eventually came, a single S J Peploe brought down the oldest commercial gallery in Scotland. Throughout, the market led the way, doubling and redoubling prices in all sectors of Scottish painting during the decade before the establishment finally gave its seal of approval, holding a major exhibition of the four Scottish Colourists at the Royal Academy in London in 2000.

Throughout this most exciting period of Scottish painting Christine Woodside was a rising star. Although an active painter and exhibitor throughout the 1960s and 70s the demands of a young family led to her concentrate on domestic life at the expense of her career and it wasn't until the early 1990s that she returned to the professional arena with vengeance. In 1993 she was elected a member of the Royal Scottish Watercolour Society and in 1995 she was awarded the Teacher’s whiskey travel scholarship at the Royal Glasgow Institute. Offers to show with commercial galleries flooded in and by the mid-1990s she was exhibiting with three central London galleries holding regular solo shows in the West End.

To this day the demand for Scottish contemporary painting remains strong south of the border and Christine is without doubts one of the leading members of that diverse school. We find in her work those qualities that are widely perceived to epitomise the 'Scottishness' in Scottish art, if there can be said to be any common qualities beyond geographical qualification. Those qualities that collectors always mention if pressed, a richness of palette, the influence of those Edwardian colourists lit up by the Fauves; often a heavy texture, adding a three dimensionality to the picture plane; a joyful almost naïve approach to representation that belies the complexity of each works structure and design.

In all Christine is the very model of the modern Scottish painter; a painter who combines the best qualities of originality and the influences of a century of Scottish masters looking over her shoulder to paint works of quiet brilliance. As a personality Christine is an optimist, her paintings contain great humour and convey much joy. It is this that really defines her paintings above all else, they are joyful.