Memorial Works

  • Ian Howard RSA

    7 November 1952 – 7 September 2024
  • In her essay of 2023 Isobel Johnston wrote incisively on Ian Howard’s work from a long engagement with his paintings...

     Vanitas II, mixed media on canvas

    In her essay of 2023 Isobel Johnston wrote incisively on Ian Howard’s work from a long engagement with his paintings and his historical precedents in both art and science.


    … alchemy with its ideas on spiritual transformation as well as the transformation of base metal into gold. He references Leonardo, Dürer, Van Eyck, Uccello and Pirandello who were scientific in their scrutiny of nature but cannot also resist the weird imagery of Hieronymus Bosch which has moral content… In recent pictures vivid stripes and sheets of colour may cut across landscape or a pictorial space, articulated by platforms and little shelves for bell jars with relics and botanical specimens, staffs and symbols, retorts, dispensing devices and the penitent’s mask once used bydoctors in time of plague. These are intriguing narratives where evidence is presented like clues in a thriller.


    Ian had been educated at Aberdeen Grammar School and along with Lennox Dunbar RSA and I, was taught by charismatic art teacher Charles Hemingway. From there he moved to Edinburgh College of Art to study painting, gaining a travelling scholarship spent in Florence, Siena, Venice and Milan. His immersion in the art of Renaissance Italy was to shape his work from then on. Among his many awards were the RSA Guthrie Award, the Gillies Bequest scholarship and the Scottish Arts Council major bursary. After graduation he joined the painting staff at Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen with Bill Littlejohn RSA, Frances Walker RSA, Joyce Cairns PPRSA, and Sandy Fraser RSA with whom he shared a studio. His first substantial engagement with printmaking was in the exhibition 4 North East Artists with Fred Bushe RSA, Frank Pottinger RSA and Lennox Dunbar RSA at the Fruitmarket Gallery. His first solo exhibition opened at Third Eye Centre, travelling to Aberdeen and Dundee where he was now Head of Painting and later Dean of Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art. During this time we worked together on two extensive print projects - Heretical Diagrams at Peacock Printmakers in Aberdeen and Double Diablerie at the Visual Research Centre in Dundee, the latter exhibited in Japan, Chicago and at the RSA. Ian moved to Edinburgh as Principal of the College of Art, a post he held until retiring to the Lot Valley in France.

  • Ian was elected an Associate of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1983 and, with Joyce Cairns, an Academician in 1998. He served as Treasurer during Bill Scott’s Presidency, chairing the RSA Foundation which brought expertise from the financial sector to advise senior Academicians on maximising returns on investments, continuing to attend meetings after retirement. He had also served on the boards of the Fruitmarket Gallery and Dundee Contemporary Arts and as a Trustee of the National Galleries of Scotland.


    Ian wore his knowledge lightly from an early fascination with the reconstruction of an alchemist’s workshop he had seen as a student, to his quotation of symbols from Joseph Beuys, on several sheets in his Heretical Diagrams portfolio. For his most recent work in the exhibition Constructed Narratives with Lennox Dunbar and I in Aberdeen Art Gallery he had introduced a new strand of imagery from a series of botanical models held by Aberdeen University. Throughout the later phase of planning he participated online from home or hospital and it became increasingly obvious that he would not be able to see the exhibition. Along with new paintings which showed him to still be in top form, he had the foresight to arrange loans from friends and collections to, in effect, stage his own memorial retrospective within the wider exhibition.


    He was supported through life and in his leaving of it by his wife Ruth, their daughters Francesca and Annabel and their children. He is, and will continue to be, sorely missed by his many friends and extended family, both here and in France.

     

    - Arthur Watson PPRSA

  • Andrew Merrylees RSA, DipTP, FRIAS, FCSD, FRSA

    31 October 1933 – 10 January 2024
  • Born 13 October 1933, Andrew studied at the School of Architecture, Glasgow School of Art, remaining there to complete a...
    Proposed Student Residencies at the North Haugh, for St Andrews University, architectural model

    Born 13 October 1933, Andrew studied at the School of Architecture, Glasgow School of Art, remaining there to complete a diploma in town planning. He was a student assistant in the practice of Basil Spence & Partners in 1952 and was promoted to architect in 1957, although he was not admitted ARIBA until 1959.

    In 1968 he was appointed associate in the Spence firm, by then known as Sir Basil Spence, Glover & Ferguson. At that time John Hardie Glover was the firm’s senior partner, Spence having retired that year and Ferguson having died three years before. Merrylees was taken into partnership in 1972.

    Merrylees left the Spence firm in 1985 to set up his own practice as Andrew Merrylees Associates, which became Andrew Merrylees, Grierson & Robertson in 1994 and Merrylees & Robertson in November 1997. In January 2001 the practice was merged with Hypostyle Architects and became consultant offices in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Hamilton.
    While maintaining his own practice, Andrew, became an external examiner at various schools of Architecture and visiting tutor at the Universities of Strathclyde and Dundee for over thirty years during which he became the external examiner in Interior Design at the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design.

  • On 22 March 1984, Andrew Merrylees, was elected as an ARSA of the Royal Scottish Academy, becoming a full RSA in 1991 and exhibited at the academy for over 50 years, later turning his hand to watercolours. An active member of the academy, Andrew served on various committees and held the positions of Internal Auditor for three years and in 1996 was elected at Assembly to be Deputy President for one year to the then President, William Baillie PPRSA.

    A decorated Architect, Andrew, received awards such as the RIBA Bronze Medal, Saltire Award, Civic Trust Award, Art in Architecture Award, RSA Gillies Award and the RSA Gold Medal. Architect, Artist, Designer and town planner he lived and worked in Edinburgh and Frejus, France drawing inspiration from both locations for all works.