HOME AGAIN

The artists reframing the domestic world

-  WRITER: HANNAH SILVER

‘There is a quieter tradition going on, different artists deciding there's something really interesting in this room to paint, rather than outside,’ says Scottish painter Andrew Cranston.

‘Philosophically, you can only be in one place at a time, and we spend a lot of our lives in rooms, or in limited spaces. I think there's a disease, a paranoia, that you're missing out on something over the hill or a party in the next room. It's a simplistic thing, but there's some truth in it - it's almost like all the world's problems stem from a person's inability to be happy in their own room.’

Cranston, born in 1969 in Hawick, Scotland, and based in Glasgow, draws on an art education that concluded with postgraduate studies at the Royal College of Art, where he was taught by Peter Doig, among others. He has been preoccupied with the magical ordinariness of interiors throughout his career, capturing everyday details - food strewn on a table, a quiet moment with the paper - in lusciously thick sweeps of oil paint. Cranston's work, although firmly rooted in the real world, is nonetheless possessed by a dreamy, otherworldly quality that intersperses memories with mundane details.