Over the years, Jack Morrocco has been quietly working away and has gradually carved out a reputation as one of Scotland’s finest contemporary painters. Ahead of a new solo exhibition, Jack McKeown met the artist at his studio in the Fife countryside.
Jack Morrocco’s days always start the same way, walking the dogs across the fields and woodland near his home in Fife.
“Mornings are a nice peaceful time,” he says.
“It’s when I collect my thoughts and mentally lay out the day ahead.”
Jack and his wife Fiona bought their quite magnificent 200-year-old, 37-room house beside the hamlet of Colinsburgh in 1992 and have spent the last 18 years restoring it.
They also have a place in the south of France which they bought by building and selling four houses, in grounds to the edge of their land and in a nearby village. They divide their time between their two homes.
Painting has clearly been a lucrative career for him, but it’s taken years of hard work and application to reach the enviable position he’s now in.
“Other artists have become famous for pushing a peanut with their nose or leaving a light on in a room or a tap running, but I’ve never been a headline grabber.”
He smiles before adding, “though I suppose I’m now becoming newsworthy for not doing these things.”
A collection of Jack’s work went on display at Gullane Art Gallery in East Lothian on Saturday, owned by former banker Roy McGregor.
Jack points out of the window in the direction of the Firth of Forth. “Roy’s gallery is about four miles that way, or 70 miles by road.
“He set up the gallery two years ago having retired from the banking industry he was looking for something to do. I met him just after he’d set up the gallery and discovered we shared a vision and were both keen to promote Scottish art.”Classical trainingBorn in Edinburgh in 1953, Jack (57) went to Dundee’s Duncan of Jordanstone art school and credits much of his success to the quality of teaching he received there.
“It was all about draughtsmanship and classical training,” he explains.
“They taught you good fundamentals. I had some great lecturers David McClure, Jack Knox and Gordon Cameron. And my uncle was still working there then.”
Jack’s uncle, Alberto Morrocco (1917-998) was a painter best known for his beach scenes and views of Venice. He was head of the School of Painting at Duncan of Jordanstone from 1950, and at the time was the youngest person to take up the post.
“He was part of a generation of Scottish painters that was very collectible in London. After that there was a vacuum, which has gradually been filled by people like myself, James Fullerton, George Devlin and others.”
Jack doesn’t have much time for the type of art that grabs the most headlines these days.Click here for a gallery of Jack’s work.”Now you see people getting short-listed for the Turner Prize for an empty room with just music playing. We would never have got away with calling that art.
“We had to not only study anatomy, illustration, design and so on, we had to gain a pass in each one. You weren’t allowed weaknesses in any area.
“I started in September of 1970 and back then the late 60s and early 70s was a really vibrant period for art all over Britain.
“You had this new idea of pop art, and all this stuff coming over from America. But we were working within a structure of classically trained artists.
“It was an era of Scottish art that hadn’t existed before and hasn’t been repeated since. Before our generation it was just classical stuff you didn’t have this new element and we were probably the last generation who were classically taught.
“It was at the end of the hippy era and it was also just great fun. Now it’s all cool and serious. Everyone wears black.”
After graduating, Jack scratched a living as a painter.
“If I’d stayed single, never had children, not got a car, not got on the property market, I could probably have kept doing that. But I wanted a life as well.
“At the end of the 70s there were very few full-time painters in Scotland. Dundee’s own McIntosh Patrick and Alexander Goudie are the only two I can think of off the top of my head.”
To supplement his meagre painting income, he began working as an illustrator for department stores in Dundee and Perth.
“For a while I was based in the attic of what used to be the Debenhams store in Dundee.
“They would bring me dresses or furniture or whatever it was, and I would sketch it.”
Jack met his wife Fiona in 1978 and she accompanied him on a tour of the United States the following year.Change of art”I was taking paintings over for an exhibition in Hamilton, Ontario, then we did around 7000 miles round the States in a Greyhound. It changed my attitude towards art quite a bit.
“Before then, I thought the brash new Americans were trying to sell us something we didn’t want. Then I realised that too many British artists thought it was all about creating something that could be displayed in the Tate.
“There’s nothing wrong with creating something that could be hung on the living room wall in a middle-class home.”
Jack and Fiona married in 1980 and have two children, Rennie (27) and Nina (24).
His freelance illustration work was sprouting branches such as photography commissions, brochures and catalogues. To cope with the demand, he set up a design and marketing business in Dundee’s technology park.
Jack saw early on that the impending computer age would change the world of design forever and decided to get out. Since 1994 he’s worked purely as a professional artist.
Last year saw him build his own studio.’46-pace commute'”I have a 46-pace commute to work,” he explains with a smile as we walk from his front door across the lawn to a low, L-shaped wooden building surrounded by trees and fields.
With a big picture window, skylights, wood-burning stove, shower room and kitchen, it’s enough to spark envy even in someone who doesn’t know which end of a paintbrush to hold. Inside, a variety of framed canvasses that will form his exhibition at Gullane are stacked against a wall, while a work in progress sits on the easel.
Jack keeps up a workmanlike pace, completing around 120-130 paintings a year.
“Being in the commercial art world I find it very difficult to say ‘no’,” he laughs.
“Part of my plan for the future is to cut down on the level of exhibiting I’m doing.”
If he has a ‘signature’ method, it’s still life from a single light source, and many of his paintings feature Fiona as the model. But there’s a great variety to his work, and he also enjoys putting multiple references into his paintings.
His painting Evermore, by way of example, contains Gauguin’s painting Nevermore, which itself references Edgar Allan Poe’s poem of the same name.
In recent years Jack has also become a late convert to landscape painting.
“I didn’t do landscape until about six years ago. I didn’t do much here because, as someone more famous than I am once said, Scotland is too grey and badly lit.
“We’ve got a place in the South of France now though, and the light there is just perfect. Really bright and it seems to shine from directly overhead. And you’ve got vivid colours everywhere.”
Jack Morrocco’s solo exhibition Timeless is now on at Gullane Art Gallery in East Lothian (www.gullaneartgallery.co.uk).
After graduating, Jack scratched a living as a painter.
“If I’d stayed single, never had children, not got a car, not got on the property market, I could probably have kept doing that. But I wanted a life as well.
“At the end of the 70s there were very few full-time painters in Scotland. Dundee’s own McIntosh Patrick and Alexander Goudie are the only two I can think of off the top of my head.”
To supplement his meagre painting income, he began working as an illustrator for department stores in Dundee and Perth.
“For a while I was based in the attic of what used to be the Debenhams store in Dundee.
“They would bring me dresses or furniture or whatever it was, and I would sketch it.”
Jack met his wife Fiona in 1978 and she accompanied him on a tour of the United States the following year.Change of art”I was taking paintings over for an exhibition in Hamilton, Ontario, then we did around 7000 miles round the States in a Greyhound. It changed my attitude towards art quite a bit.
“Before then, I thought the brash new Americans were trying to sell us something we didn’t want. Then I realised that too many British artists thought it was all about creating something that could be displayed in the Tate.
“There’s nothing wrong with creating something that could be hung on the living room wall in a middle-class home.”
Jack and Fiona married in 1980 and have two children, Rennie (27) and Nina (24).
His freelance illustration work was sprouting branches such as photography commissions, brochures and catalogues. To cope with the demand, he set up a design and marketing business in Dundee’s technology park.
Jack saw early on that the impending computer age would change the world of design forever and decided to get out. Since 1994 he’s worked purely as a professional artist.
Last year saw him build his own studio.’46-pace commute'”I have a 46-pace commute to work,” he explains with a smile as we walk from his front door across the lawn to a low, L-shaped wooden building surrounded by trees and fields.
With a big picture window, skylights, wood-burning stove, shower room and kitchen, it’s enough to spark envy even in someone who doesn’t know which end of a paintbrush to hold. Inside, a variety of framed canvasses that will form his exhibition at Gullane are stacked against a wall, while a work in progress sits on the easel.
Jack keeps up a workmanlike pace, completing around 120-130 paintings a year.
“Being in the commercial art world I find it very difficult to say ‘no’,” he laughs.
“Part of my plan for the future is to cut down on the level of exhibiting I’m doing.”
If he has a ‘signature’ method, it’s still life from a single light source, and many of his paintings feature Fiona as the model. But there’s a great variety to his work, and he also enjoys putting multiple references into his paintings.
His painting Evermore, by way of example, contains Gauguin’s painting Nevermore, which itself references Edgar Allan Poe’s poem of the same name.
In recent years Jack has also become a late convert to landscape painting.
“I didn’t do landscape until about six years ago. I didn’t do much here because, as someone more famous than I am once said, Scotland is too grey and badly lit.
“We’ve got a place in the South of France now though, and the light there is just perfect. Really bright and it seems to shine from directly overhead. And you’ve got vivid colours everywhere.”
Jack Morrocco’s solo exhibition Timeless is now on at Gullane Art Gallery in East Lothian (www.gullaneartgallery.co.uk).