Andrew Cranston

b. 1969

Scottish painter Andrew Cranston was born in Hawick in the Scottish borders in 1969. He currently lives and works in Glasgow. He graduated from Manchester Polytechnic in 1990, before completing his BA in Fine Art in 1993 at Grays School of Art, Aberdeen, followed by his Master of Painting in 1996 from London’s Royal College of Art.

His work uses narrative and humour to explore the strange and tragic nature of everyday life. A recurring theme in his paintings has been depicting rooms described in works of literature and fiction. Cranston often manipulates materials like paint, collage and varnish to create layered and re-worked images.

In 2014 he was awarded the Arts Foundation fellowship by the Royal Scottish Academy, and in 2018 he exhibited his largest solo show to date, ‘But the dream had no sound’, at Ingleby gallery, Edinburgh.

His works are housed in collections at Loewe Foundation, Madrid; He Art Museum, Shunde, China; the Huamo Museum, Suzhou, China; Royal College of Art, London; Unilever Collection, London; Hawick Museum, Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh; National Gallery of Scotland; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Hall Art Foundation, Vermont; Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; Portland Art Museum, Oregon and the Aishti Foundation, Beirut.