Callum Innes (b. 1962)

Scottish artist, best known for his austerely disciplined abstract images created by alternately adding and subtracting layers of oil colour: a process referred to as ‘unpainting’. Born in Edinburgh, he studied at Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen, 1980–84, and was awarded a postgraduate Diploma in Painting from Edinburgh College of Art in 1985. He has exhibited widely in the UK and mainland Europe, the USA, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand, and examples of his work are in major public and private collections throughout the world, including the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, the Tate Gallery and the British Museum, London, and the Centre Pompidou, Paris. In 1995 he was shortlisted for the Turner Prize, and in 2002 he was the winner of the Jerwood Prize for Painting. His 2012 light installation, The Regent Bridge, Calton Road, Edinburgh, was the first work in which he adapted the aesthetic principles of his painting style to the requirements of a large-scale public art commission. He lives and works in Edinburgh.

Bibliography: Callum Innes website; R. McKenzie, Public Sculpture of Edinburgh (2 vols), Liverpool, 2018, vol. 1, pp. xx–xxi, 41–43, 179–80.

Ray McKenzie 2018