my name was - Graeme Gilmour

Back in the early 80's, through a shared love of pool, beer and lassies, I became friendly with a Glasgow School of Art student who was working on some displays at the Peoples Palace museum, his name was Graeme Gilmour. For several months myself, another friend and Graeme frequented some very dodgy pubs in the East End of Glasgow and also the Art Schools students union where Graeme was often a DJ. After the work finished at the Peoples Palace I never saw Graeme again for more than 10 years until I happened to bump into him with his partner Flo Foster at an exhibition in Glasgow … He told me he had got into large scale sculpture and pyrotechnics and now worked mainly in England - unknown to me (finger on the pulse me as I've said more than once) he was making a name for himself and was becoming a very successful artist - he also apparently worked on some early designs with Andy Scott for the Kelpies in Falkirk.
Then about 2 or 3 years ago a curator at the Peoples Palace phoned me and said my name had been mentioned as someone who knew Graeme back in the day and did I know how to contact him, I didn’t, I hadn't really thought of him since I bumped into him some 20 years previously with Flo. I explained what I remembered of Graeme to the curator about his sculpture and the pyrotechnics - half an hour later she phoned me back having discovered he had committed suicide in 2013, a couple of years after the death of his partner Flo - I was shocked to say the least… Anyway fast forward to yesterday, when his name happened to come up in conversation with a friend, I suddenly remembered I had an old transparency of Graeme gathering dust in my files, it was one of the first portraits I ever did of an artist back in the early 80's - so here it is scanned and retouched … I hope you don’t mind me sharing this photo and this story, today - enjoy and if you have the time, read, at the links below, a little about a very old friend and his work.
 
http://clusterform.tumblr.com/post/48558559087/a-celebration-for-the-life-of-graeme-gilmour
http://www.graemegilmour.co.uk/GRAEME_GILMOUR.html
https://www.thestage.co.uk/features/obituaries/2013/graeme-gilmour/

http://www.theargus.co.uk/news/10508580.Brighton_artist_Graeme_Gilmour_took_own_life_in_grief_over_partner/