Kenneth Dingwall (Paperback)

Kenneth Dingwall: Being surveys over sixty years of abstract paintings, drawings, prints and constructions by this Edinburgh-based Scottish artist (b.1938).  Colours, textures and abstract forms are used in a search to create a presence that can exist as an entity in its own right, and yet relate to human moods and feelings. Over the ages, many cultures, including our own, expressed ideas, fears and hopes through visual images not drawn from outward appearance. Each day we gather information from “abstract” signs; our sense of touch even when not touching, how weather colours our moods, how the subtlest change of pallor conveys health or illness, and the corner of a mouth or the body’s linear tension betrays emotion. Degrees of spatial distance acutely register when people are too close or too distant.  Our thoughts are guided by many unvoiced sensations. Essays by distinguished art historians and authors - Duncan Macmillan, Emeritus Professor of the History of Scottish Art, and the art critic for The Scotsman,  Professor Natalie Adamson, author of a number of publications on the development of post-war abstract art in Paris and Europe and Dr Alistair  Rider, who also teaches at St Andrews University and has researched and published on abstraction, minimalism, and durational projects. A selection of sketchbook notes and quotes gathered by Dingwall over this sixty year period are interspersed through the plates. The works illustrated were made in Scotland, Switzerland and the United States and are drawn from public, private and corporate collections in Europe and the United States and  also include works from the artist’s studio, some never before shown. This archival publication is timed to coincide with a retrospective exhibition at the City Art Centre, Edinburgh from 21 November 2026 to 7 March 2027.