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ONE OF George Bernard Shaw’s most celebrated maxims was ‘He who can does. He who cannot teaches.’ Today we seem to have shortage of teachers but a plethora of advisers, consultants, managers and other ‘experts’. This exciting exhibition at the Archway Gallery, Lochgilphead, is the work of two retired art teachers, but they can certainly paint.
John Leckie and Ronald Togneri both studied at Glasgow School of Art in the decade after the end of World War II; both became teachers and were heads of the art departments at Campbeltown Grammar and Lochgilphead High respectively. Both are now retired and are able to devote themselves to their own painting. Both display the excellence of the teaching at GSA at that timewith its emphasis on the importance of draughtsmanship and painting technique. Neither has previously shown so many canvases at one exhibition.
There is a marked contrast in styles of the two artists. Ronald Togneri’s canvases are gentle, often idyllic, with the paint applied thinly, at times having a pastel-like quality. John Leckie’s oils are more expressionist. Both artists include still-lifes, landscapes, flower studies and scenes of everyday life in the Kintyre peninsula.
Particularly outstanding are Togneri’s studies of rocks at Muasdale and Westport, his rural scenes evoking a quieter time. In his still-lifes ordinary objects are often contrasted with brightly coloured fruits and vegetables – aubergines, peppers, garlic, olives while his kippers are mouth-wateringly succulent.
Leckie’s vision is more dramatic from his sea study and Tarbert to the haunting ‘On the Way to the Ferry’. His flower studies seem to exude scent and invite the viewer to fondle the petals.
There is much to admire in this exhibition which continues until September 29.
