David McLeod Martin (RSW, RGI)
David McLeod Martin was born in Glasgow in 1922. He studied at Glasgow School of Art from 1940 – 1942 and served in India with the RAF between 1942 and 1946. He returned to Glasgow School of Art in 1946 where he studied under David Donaldson and met his future wife, the painter Isobel Smith. After graduating, David pursued a career in teaching. He painted regularly all through his teaching career and retired from his post as Principal Teacher of Art at Hamilton Grammar School in 1983.
David exhibited for many years at the Royal Scottish Academy, the Royal Glasgow Institute and regularly at major Scottish annual exhibitions until his death in 2018.
His painting subjects were mainly landscape & still life. In landscape he tried to extract rhythmic lines & lactated shapes from what was seen. These were sometimes echoed in other parts of the painting. The interpretation was not, therefore, totally visual – the painting becoming an equivalent to what was seen, taking on its own reality as it progressed. It was a process of development tied up with the act of painting – an exploration of shapes and movement, derived from visual sources. The painting of still life was also exploratory in that objects were rarely ‘set up’ in the conventional manner, the composition developing through knowledge of the objects and how he wanted to use them.
