Duncan Shanks: The Unseen Journey
This intimate new exhibition offers a rare opportunity to explore the creative process behind one of Scotland's most celebrated landscape artists.
Date: Friday 30 October 2026 - Sunday 02 May 2027
Time: 10:00 - 17:00
Venue: Hunterian Art Gallery
Category: Exhibitions, Hunterian
Duncan Shanks: The Unseen Journey offers a rare opportunity to explore the creative process behind one of Scotland's most celebrated landscape artists. Focusing on a decade of sketchbooks, exploratory studies and finished works inspired by the Clyde Valley, the exhibition reveals how observation, memory, music and literature come together in Shanks' distinctive practice.
Presented in the Hunterian Art Gallery's focus space, this intimate exhibition features 26 works, including sketchbook pages, preparatory studies and completed paintings. Together, they illuminate the journey from first mark-making to finished composition, allowing visitors to see the hidden workings behind paintings that can often appear spontaneous and intuitive.
At the heart of the display is the artist's lifelong habit of daily drawing. Quotations, annotations and personal reflections drawn from his sketchbooks reveal an intense internal dialogue, while references to poets, composers and fellow artists offer insight into the wide range of influences that inform his work. Seasonal studies of the River Clyde and its surrounding landscape demonstrate the dynamic interplay between close observation and abstraction that characterises his art.
Because many of the featured works are sensitive to light, The Unseen Journey is shown in two instalments. The first instalment, from 30 October 2026 until 31 January 2027, centres on the finished painting Autumn Mist. The second instalment, from 2 February to 2 May 2027, explores Shanks’ fascination with the repeated motifs of his cherry tree and his studies of the rising winter sun.
Building on the 2015 Hunterian exhibition Duncan Shanks Sketchbooks: The Poetry of Place, which celebrated the artist's major gift of 106 sketchbooks to the museum, The Unseen Journey explores a further decade of material from this remarkable archive. Digitised sketchbook pages and film content featuring the artist provide additional insight into a creative practice rooted in careful looking, reflection and an enduring connection to the landscape that inspires his work.
The Hunterian Art Gallery is open Tuesday–Sunday, 10.00am–5.00pm. Entry is free.