Sunday June 29th 2025
Flour Mill by Edwin G Lucas
Written by Local Democracy Reporter, Paul Kelly
An artist unrecognised in his lifetime is set for his first exhibition in the Borders.
Edwin G Lucas (1911-1990) was one of Scotland’s most original 20th century artists.
He has become known for his unique, imaginative work since being “discovered” by the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in 2013.
Since then, high-profile solo exhibitions have been held in Edinburgh and Southend-on-Sea.
Now for the first time his work is being shown in the Borders at Hawick Museum – six years after his last exhibition in Scotland.
Lucas’s artistic journey began with watercolour landscape paintings, but his work took a radical turn when he encountered Surrealism in the 1930s. He later referred to this period as a “flirtation with Surrealism”. He combined this style with his own original view of the world to produce highly individual paintings.
During the post-war years Lucas was at his most creative and prolific. Although he had a day job as a civil servant, he saw himself primarily as a serious painter. During this period he experimented with many different styles and subjects, resulting in work that is very varied and unlike anything else which was being created at the time.
Lucas married a Borderer, Marjorie McCulloch, in 1952 and soon paused his painting to focus on family life, before returning to the easel in the 1980s.
This exhibition shows the full sweep of Lucas’s remarkable career – from early watercolours to paintings and drawings from his Surrealist period, his striking oil paintings from the 1940s and 1950s and finally his innovative later work, alongside rare archival material from the artist’s estate.
Alan Lucas, the artist’s son, said: “My father loved the Borders and he’d be delighted to be having an exhibition there 35 years after his death.
“He once described himself as ‘a purely individual painter’, because he was determined to avoid the -isms and conventions of the time. I think the unique nature and variety of the work in this show proves his point.”
The exhibition, Edwin G Lucas: A Purely Individual Painter, opens on July 5.
Live Borders have an exciting and diverse range of exhibitions and live events in 2025, to find out more visit https://www.liveborders.org.uk/museum-exhibition-events/
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