95-year-old artist star

Art brings people together, and it showed today in the GOSSIP gallery.

For the work of Thomas McGoran, a 95-year-old Glaswegian artist who specialises in evocative images of his early life in 1930s is a big hit .
 
Tommy ,  is no stranger to fame. The last couple of months have seen him featured on radio, television, newspapers and a podcast.
 
Now one of his paintings will be featured on a bottle of whisky.
He is delighted. He didn’t start painting until he retired when his wife bought him a set of oil paints telling him he needed to do something with his time. 
 
So Tommy taught himself painting.
 
This afternoon I invigilated in the gallery and I was amazed at the public response.
 
All were drawn, as if by magnets, to his work.
 
 I spoke to the two young women (see photo above) and asked what it was that attracted them.
Colour, people and  subject matter about  a world they knew nothing about, they said.
 
Well, that’s not surprising since these students were from India and Russia.
 
For older visitors, like Margaret, (see extra photo) is was nostalgia. She grew up in Govan.
Each painting resonated with her early life in the city.

She points to the painting of the Lamplighter, a job her father used to do.  Sometimes he couldn’t be bothered to go to work and he would send 12 year old Margaret and her 14-year-old brother to do his job.
“I had to stand on my brothers shoulder with the gas lighter. Yes it was tricky,” said Margaret.
 
All remembered the close sense of community something we have lost in today’s age.
 
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