The Close

This is Malky the Chib. He’s depicted full of menace and he certainly frightens me. But it’s all bravado. He’s as much victim as perpetrator. Malky’s heyday was the late 1960’s, an era of Glasgow bogie men such as the infamous Bible John. His star will shine dimly for a year or two till someone harder - and there always is someone harder- pulls him up a close and turns the blade on him. His put-upon girlfriend is trying to hawk fake fish. And you can forget culture...it's binned! ‘Hope’ appears through the doorframe: a ‘still’ from the opening titles of the movie Play Misty for Me. At 29-31 seconds this house appears; a clear beautiful sunlit 1969 California and the utter antitheses of the dark, dank Glasgow life I was experiencing at the time; a place you were never, ever going to escape from.

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Oil on canvas, approx: 6ft X 4ft 8in (1800 X 1400 mm).

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