Artist in focus - Gerald Laing

Felicity Lunn

Who is he? One of the first generation of young British artists, a successful Pop Art painter who was given an exhibition at the Richard Feigen Gallery in New York while still at St MartinÕs. After almost three decades of self-imposed seclusion, he is enjoying a comeback. Where has he been ail this time? Laing went straight from St MartinÕs to New York, where he 'surfed on the wave of the avantgarde'. In 1969, not satisfied with easy success, he moved to Scotland to a long period of self-discovery. His rejection in 1973 of abstract landscape-inspired sculpture for figurative work brought his career to a standstill. It wasnt until he established his own foundry, in 1979 that he was able to learn traditional techniques and embark on a series of major commissions. Where can you see his work? At the Fine Art Society this spring. Laing will be showing work made throughout his sculpting career. from the abstract pieces of the early 1970s to figurative pieces such as The Kicker. 1995, below. How does he see his chequered career? Stoically. He has no regrets about his youthful indulgence and the pursuit of figuration turned out to be the right course for him, though it was tough to begin with:'My career was in ruins and for four years I couldn't sell a thing.' What have been his major influences? The art of his contemporaries, as been less important to him than monuments such as the BoerWar Memorial in his native Newcastle. Laing sees the powerful human quality of this work reflected in his own public pieces such as The Frieze of the Wise and Foolish Virgins in Edinburgh and Ten Dragons at Bank underground station in London.

Gerald Laing is at the Fine Art
Society, New Bond Street,

W1, 22 March