Looking at Alasdair Gray looking @fidelmacook

Went to see the Alasdair Gray retrospective, From the Personal to the Universal, at Glasgow's Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Murseum.

It was well and truly covered by The Herald when it opened a few weeks ago and I was away for a week so this was my first chance to see it.

Nice to be able to just enjoy an exhibition without thinking how I'd write about it.
Family came too though they were in and out in 10 mins.

Son says: 'Tell me again, mum, why exactly are we here...?'

I did my final year dissertation on Gray's novels when I was studying English and Scottish Literature at Aberdeen University many moons ago.

It had a terribly pretentious title and I rambled on and on about the fantasy and reality in his work. I remember my tutor, Isabel Murray, saying I shouldn't attempt to interview AG as it might be a 'distraction'.

I've met him since and I'm still in awe of the man. A genuine genius who is an other-worldly creature in real life.

My favourite works in the show were of people he has met over the course of his 80 years on planet earth. Often drawn on plain brown wrapping paper and many worked on years after they were first started.

Family, friends, acquaintances, writers, artists... it's a broad mix.

My Herald colleague, Phil Miller, is even part of the show. He and his wife, Hope, commissioned a painting by Gray when as a wedding present to themselves in 2009.

This picture shows two ladies examining a portrait of another journalist, Fidelma Cook, made when she was working at Queen Margaret Drive, the old BBC hq in Glasgow in 1978.

Fidelma worked on flagship BBC Scotland news programme, Reporting Scotland. (I used to watch it and years later, when I worked with Fidelma at The Sunday Mail, I was in awe of her too... but don't tell her I said so!)

Fidelma is perched on a desk in the newsroom looking resplendent in a hot pink trouser suit, with a long thin trademark cigarette in her hand.

It was part of the City Recorder series, which Gray made for The People's Palace during the 1970s.

The series was commissioned by Elspeth King, a quiet revolutionary who is now at helm of Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum in Stirling.

I think someone should commission another City Recorder series. It's so easy to take pictures these days. Not so easy to make pictures.