BRIAN PETRIE
Brian Petrie: Contemporary Scottish Artist
Born in Fife in 1952, Brian Petrie trained in Graphic design at Napier College in Edinburgh before Joining DC Thomson in Dundee as a magazine designer.
In 1995, he left to pursue a freelance career as a cartoonist, producing the cartoon strip “Chic ‘n’ Sammy for the Sunday Mail and The Sporran Legion for The Scottish Sun where he now supplies a daily topical cartoon.
The very nature of the topical cartoon means it’s a tea time to supper time shift!
The rest of the working day is spent painting from his studio overlooking the waves at Westhaven on the Angus coastline. His inspiration comes from regular trips, armed with a camera and sketch book, around the coasts and islands of Scotland.
Brian works mainly in oils and acrylics and his paintings are on show in a number of carefully chosen Galleries throughout Scotland.
Brian Petrie Artist Statement
My painting career started around the late seventies, when I exhibited with fellow artist and cousin Bob Thomson in various venues throughout Angus including Carnoustie Library, Dundee Rep and the Cottage Gallery in Newtyle. At this time I only worked in watercolour and could probably paint Panbride Church and Carnoustie beach from memory, having done it so often.
When I left DC Thomson in 1995 I gave up to concentrate on cartoons, but having visited numerous galleries around Scotland during the next few years I had the urge to start again with bolder and brighter colours, but I just couldn’t seem to achieve this in watercolour so I bought a few tubes of acrylic and fumbled my way around for a year or so, trying to produce the type of artwork I was looking for.
When the Harbour Gallery in Broughty Ferry opened in 2001, this was a great place to hang my new style of paintings. From there I toured various galleries with piles of artwork, some took me on, some didn’t. I’m eternally grateful to those who did.