Andrew Cranston’s figurative paintings are steeped in atmosphere; their fragments of narrative quickly dissolving into dreamlike visions of objects awash in colour, shape and texture. His works often depict domestic interior spaces – in a not-so-distant echo of the arrangements of classical still lives – but where such ordinary things as windows, items of furniture, and ornaments become conduits for far more uncanny formal explorations. Abandoned tables, libraries, tents and private chambers are just some of the scenes in which Cranston’s expansive imagination takes shape, drawing from his lifelong interest in storytelling through colour and form. His works take two distinct formats: large scale canvases worked in distemper and oil, and smaller paintings executed directly on hardback book covers. Often his paintings revel in a single colour field, whether oceanic blues, ruddy ochres, or blazing scarlets, within which his dreamlike worlds unfurl through the expressive treatment of surfaces. Their atmospheres flicker between the private and the theatrical, the picturesque and the chaotic, abundance and solitude, each in their own way beckoning the viewer deeper into their worlds.

Andrew Cranston was born in Hawick in 1969, and lives and works in Glasgow, Scotland. His work has been the subject of recent solo exhibitions at Hepworth Wakefield, Wakefield (2023); Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh (2023); Modern Art, London (2022). Group exhibitions include: ‘The Moth and the Thunder clap, Modern Art, London (2023); ‘The Inner Island’, Villa Carmignac (2023); ‘Dreamhome’, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (2022) the Royal Academy, London (2022); Jerwood Gallery, Hastings (2019). Cranston’s works are held in collections including: TATE; Scottish National Gallery; the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; ICA Miami; LACMA, Los Angeles; the Portland Art Museum; and the Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh.