Hosie’s figures appear to symbolise a sense of aloneness and a search for identity. Where the onlookers eye is made to rest on a frozen stillness. Child/adult figures wrestle with their own presence, often accompanied by images of broken aeroplanes, guns and other toy like props. Lovers float and fall within silent skies where the static quality of the protagonists serve to intensify the emotional aspect to the viewer.

John Griffiths describes Hosie’s work as “figures like secular saints of a maimed culture, belonging to a work of new magic painting. Influences ranging from the static nature of Piero della Franchesca and early Renaissance painting to the dislocated human presence found in the metaphysical work of Carlo Carra”.

Hosie says of his work “we are confronted with destruction, guilt, conscience and perhaps a frail optimism”. Apptly conveyed in a painting titled “Guilt, Hate, Shame, Revenge, Love” where a beautiful woman looking out at us in a long evening dress holds an automatic waepon framed by an evening sky.

The stark introspective of imagery in the work is challenging and ominus yet images of youth are arguably symbols of hope, optimism and regeneration which serves to emphasis Hosie’s notion of the “fragility of optimism”.

Born Glasgow, 1962. Trained at Edinburgh College of Art graduating with MA in 1986.

Related professional experience:

Tutor and Lecturer of Drawing and Painting, Glasgow School of Art, 1988-91. Edinburgh College of Art, 1993-2005.

Visiting Lecturer, Duncan of Jordanstone, 1990. Berkeley University, California, 1990

THE GAMBIA  /  SENEGAL

SCOTTISH IMPRESSIONS

PRIVATE COLLECTION  -  MR. FERENC DONDERER