A Life In Pictures. Alasdair Gray

Arab tribes who believed in One God, carved out a strong moral law for them on a stone tablet. Greek Democracies achieved greater freedom of new thought, poetry, drama, art and philosophy, which Roman Imperialism partly destroyed and partly (by adoption) prolonged.

       A Personal View of History: The Ice Age; 1950, ink and gouache on paper, 15 x 21 cm/21 x 15 cm

       A Personal View of History: The Stone Age; 1950, ink and gouache on paper, 15 x 21 cm/21 x 15 cm

       A Personal View of History: Human Sacrifice; 1950, ink and gouache on paper, 15 x 21 cm/21 x 15 cm

       A Personal View of History: Babylonian Science; 1950, ink and gouache on paper, 15 x 21 cm/21 x 15 cm

       A Personal View of History: Moses on Sinai: The Moral Law; 1950, ink and gouache on paper, 15 x 21 cm/21 x 15 cm

       A Personal View of History: Greek Civilization , 1950, ink and gouache on paper, 15 x 21 cm/21 x 15 cm

      Between Roman Imperialism (to the left) and the Dark Ages (beneath) came The Sermon on the Mount, with Jesus telling the people of that vast, slave-based empire that every human soul was equally valued by God. He was a moonlit figure on a low pinnacle, preaching to upturned faces and seen from behind. (I have never been able to imagine Jesus from in front.) But I lost that picture. Then came Monastic Learning, The Feudal System, James Watt’s Steam Engine and The Industrial City. The final picture was to be The Triumph of Socialism, showing Riddrie’s Municipal Public Library. I thought this well-planned, well-stocked public library was a triumphant example of local egalitarian democracy. Here, even more than in Whitehill Senior Secondary School, I had been able to give myself exactly the education I wanted, so thought anybody who could read and think would be able to get it there too. Every district of Glasgow and Britain now had such free libraries. A just civilization was finally being established.

       A Personal View of History: Roman Imperialism; 1950, ink and gouache on paper, 15 x 21 cm/ 21 x 15 cm

       A Personal View of History: The Dark Ages; 1950, ink and gouache on paper, 15 x 21 cm/ 21 x 15 cm

       A Personal View of History: The Monk; 1950, ink and gouache on paper, 15 x 21 cm/ 21 x 15 cm

       A Personal View of History: The Feudal System; 1950, ink and gouache on paper, 15 x 21 cm/ 21 x 15 cm

       A Personal View of History: The Engineer; 1950, ink and gouache on paper, 15 x 21 cm/ 21 x 15 cm

       A Personal View of History: The Industrial City , 1950, ink and gouache on paper, 15 x 21 cm/ 21 x 15 cm

      I could not draw Riddrie Public Library. It held a multitude of books I had found exciting, but the building was part of Riddrie Housing Scheme, the kind of good, pleasant, normal place where I thought everyone should live. But my imagination was not excited by the tree-lined boulevard, the shrubberies and bowling green from which streets radiated between houses with well-kept gardens, and converged on the highest building, which was Riddrie Primary School. It had been planned and almost wholly built shortly before I was born so gave me no solid sense of the past until, when 12, I discovered the Monkland Canal curving round it up the four huge water-stairs of Blackhill Locks. This quarter-mile of huge stone casemates and embankments was slowly turning derelict. If Rome had a modern housing scheme like Riddrie, and a young boy there had no knowledge of the Roman past, he would have felt as I did on suddenly coming upon the Colosseum. This canal proved people here had once done gigantic things, so might do them again – a wonderful idea.

       Blackhill Locks , circa 1950, ink and wash on paper, 15 x 21 cm

       Monkland Canal, circa 1950, ink and wash on paper, 15 x 21 cm

      In the spring of 1952 my mother died soon after her 50th birthday. Most parents kill our infantile faith that we can have anything we want. Mum and Dad left me sure that I could make anything I wanted in words and pictures. I had started imagining a series of pictures called Acts of God, showing miraculous biblical episodes happening in present-day Glasgow, from the Garden of Eden to the Apocalypse. No boy of seventeen could start to make a living by his art in Scotland. My Leaving Certificate passes in Art and English (said Dad and the Whitehill Headmaster after earnest discussions) qualified me to become a paid trainee librarian who might make art his spare-time hobby, and advised me to apply for that. I would have preferred a rich friend to pay me a steady wage to paint anything I liked, and found one fifty years later. In 1952 Glasgow Public Library Department said I could start work with them in the autumn. Meanwhile I went to join a night school class in life drawing, because drawing naked men and women (preferably women) would teach me to paint people who looked less like caricatures. But this training would stop when I became a librarian who would have to work in the evenings.

       Theseus and the Minotaur , 1952, scraperboard, 42 x 30 cm

       Cartoons from Whitehill Secondary School Magazine , 1950–52

      “And now Mrs Claveridge, I will delve into your subconscious mind.”

      “It’s all very well for you!”

      The Swot (or Beastly Swat) with his mortal foe, the common pupil.

      “Don’t be selfish, Geraldine!”

      The night school was in Glasgow School of Art, and applicants had to show the Registrar a portfolio of work, so he could reject those who only wanted to look