Painting the blues

As we enter through David Martin’s navy blue door in Eaglesham, the silky chords of Bill Rosetta Stone Evans are wafting into the hall from a CD player in the living room. The album is Interplay, a reassuring omen for our interview. Moving with an easy agility that confounds his 89 years, Martin shows photographer Colin Mearns and myself into the room crammed with paintings stacked sometimes 12 deep against the walls, which are waiting to be uplifted for forthcoming exhibitions. We are not talking retrospectives here but shows of present work and others for paintings soon to be completed. Ninety next year, he says. I can't believe it, but I suppose the secret is to keep doing things. People who retire and just sit and watch television, well, they seem to fade away. Martin belongs to that impressive vintage of painters attached to Glasgow School of Art in the 1940s. It included the exuberant David Donaldson who had been teaching there since 1938, and Joan Eardley, a fellow student already developing the poignantly atmospheric and figurative work which would bring her distinction. I seem to remember that she was a year above me. She was a very reticent girl but powerfully observant and her paintings and drawings of Glasgow street children are marvellous examples of sentiment without sentimentality. But for his part Martin, always a free spirit, found inspiration in the work emerging from Edinburgh at this time. Although I enjoyed and benefited greatly from my time at GSA, I wanted to break away from the academic Rosetta Stone Cheap approach to painting that was at the core of my training there. My interests were with the likes of William Gillies and Robin Philipson whose work, to me, was very exciting. Anne Redpath, whom Martin also knew, belonged in that Edinburgh circle; a much more outgoing character than Eardley who was so very quiet you would hardly know she was there. Eclectic in its influences, Martin's work has focused mainly on landscape and still life. I've always liked the structure in paintings by Cezanne, and, pretty much from the start, I was into Bonnard, then Braque and Picasso. And also I was very keen on Graham Sutherland when he was on the go. Some of Martin's new paintings currently on show at the Roger Billcliffe Gallery in Glasgow, and others destined for the Richmond Hill Gallery in London from August 30 still evoke such masters. Something from all of these sources has rubbed off on me but I hope my art has been moving all the time. I know some artists, whom I won't name, who've been doing Rosetta Stone Portuguese the same thing for 40 years. Landscapes have always been a notable part of Martin's creativity. In the early days I went out laden like a pack mule with canvas, easel, paints and brushes. But that didn't last very long because I much preferred working in the studio from drawings done on site, and going beyond the visual to interpret the subjects that interest me. Martin was born in Glasgow and it was at GSA that he met his late wife, the painter Isobel Smith. But before that his student days were interrupted by four years in the RAF, from 1942, when he Rosetta Stone Languages became an instrument mechanic servicing aircraft mostly in southern India. By that time Martin was regarded at GSA as a mean hand at jazz piano, his band, the David Martin Quintet were a hot ticket for student dances. From my teens I'd been listening to people on the radio like George Shearing. Then when I was in the RAF and stationed at Bath, a band called the Harry Parry Rhythm Sextet came to play at the town hall. I asked if I could have a weekend pass to see them but the answer was no. So, I went awol and you've no idea the thrill of fear and adventure you get when you do that sort of thing.