SCOTLAND’S foremost literary legends are being reimagined in an art exhibition that will see the likes of Robert Burns rock a pair of x-ray vision glasses.
Shining a new type of light on some of the country’s best-known poets, former National cartoonist Greg Moodie will host his first ever exhibit.
Hosted by the Scottish Poetry Library in Edinburgh, Poetic Licence will showcase 32 paintings from the artist, ranging from Robert Louis Stevenson and Liz Lochhead to Walter Scott and Billie Kay.
Moodie has taken existing portraits of the poets and reworked the images to create a fun and energic piece of art that sees Hugh MacDiarmid don a cagoule and eyebrow piercing.
Moodie told The National: “All the images I use are found images, they already exist, and the idea was to mix them all up a bit and take them out of the time they were originally painted.
“In the original painting of Walter Scott, he’s wearing very formal wear, and it’s done in an old master’s style.
“It’s a very nice painting but I wanted to lift the main image and subvert it. So I gave him this cagoule thing and he’s got a piercing to make people go ‘what’s going on there?’”
Moodie said it all started when the landlord of his local pub asked him to do a portrait of The Bard and he decided to mix the style up a bit.
He said: “The landlord said to me ‘why not do a portrait of Robert Burns?’ “I thought he was expecting tartan shortbread type of stuff. I did this 21st century psychodelia take on it, just for fun.”
That, Moodie said, ended up being an inspiration for the exhibition, which will run now until October 12.
The artist said he hoped the paintings would shine a new light on Scotland foremost literary talent to a newer generation.
He said: “You should get a sense of fun from most of these images. That’s the idea, to remove the stuffiness from some of these old guys.
“Young people in particular might be nonplussed by it because of the formal wear and style of it. So the idea is to jolt you a little bit.
“I want people to think ‘wow I wasn’t expecting that’. The image that poets have is generally a bit beardy, so just mixing that up and making you go ‘that was different’.”
Accessibility is a key part of the exhibit for Moodie, which is free to enter and is open until October 14.
More information can be found here.
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