No Shades of Grey for Fergus & Meg

A good day at work...

I went to Edinburgh to meet Alice Strang, curator of the JD Fergusson exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art.

This picture shows Alice standing in front of Fergusson's vast painting from 1913 depicting the eternal dance of nature, Les Eus.

The show is the latest in the National Galleries of Scotland's Scottish Colourists series and runs until 15 June at Modern Two (used to be known as The Dean Gallery).

I've been fascinated by Fergusson ever since visiting the Fergusson Gallery in Perth a few years ago for an exhibition of work by his lifelong partner, Margaret Morris.

I love stories with my art and the story of Fergus and Meg is sexy, beguiling, rumbustious, enduring and full of primordial energy. A bit like this painting, which Alice told me presented a logistical challenge for the team when it came to moving it from the Hunterian in Glasgow and into the gallery in Edinburgh.

The doors and windows of this former orphanage are too small to allow the 216cmX 277cm painting to be brought in by conventional means so the installation team had to be creative.

It was painted not long after Fergus and Meg, a pioneer of modern dance who created her own form of dance called Margaret Morris Movement, first met in 1913.

Theirs was a passionate union which, despite a 17-year-age gap lasted until his death in 1961 at the age of 82. They never married and were free spirits until the end. Margaret died in 1980 having spent almost 20 years making sure that her man's legacy was secure.

Alice's insights into the details which make up this exhibition made for a thought-provoking visit.

The work is bold as brass. Strong, confident lines, curves with juicy succulent colour. The portraits are stunning and I also loved his elongated wood carvings of figures, which I'd never seen before. It was as though he teased out the figure inside the grain.

Alice and her team went to great lengths to reproduce the exact shade of grey from the walls of Fergusson's first studio at Picardy Place in Edinburgh studio walls for this show.

But there were no shades of grey for Fergus and his Meg.