" Successful shows in London, New York and Scotland with an ever-widening following of collectors, and with an escalating commercial value he is established as one of Scotland's most exciting  painters, building on the classical tradition of figurative painting to develop his own unique style."

The Dictionary of Scottish Art and Architecture

"Gatherer is doing what gifted artists have always done. He does not imitate the past; he searches the past for ways of expressing his own sense of the present. It is as valid to compare his work with videos by Sam Taylor-Wood, often showing young urban professionals of the same sort, as it is to compare it to that of the great painters of the past whom he evokes in some of his compositions. We need both points of reference to understand what he is trying to achieve. Neither comparison detracts from the impressive nature of his achievement."

Edward Lucie Smith, Art Historian and Critic 

"Gatherer has to be commended for his recent London exhibition of present day homage to Caravaggio."

Brian Sewell, Art critic. London Evening Standard

Artists Statement:

I truly believe that the meaning or essence of painting is inside the work and it cannot be decanted into a proposition. I can no more describe a painting with a accompanying note on the wall than I can describe a novel by playing the violin. Hence the old aphorism:talking about painting is like dancing about architecture. However for those seeking enlightenment on brushstrokes through words, here are a few scribbled thoughts.

The foundation of my work as a figurative painter is rooted in the ancestral tradition of the life class and close human observation. The study of the human figure and human psychology are the central themes to my work.

I would like to think that my paintings entice the viewer to interact with contemporary scenes from the vantage point of an unseen onlooker thereby creating a psychological ambiguity that is emphasised by strong forms and colours modelled in dramatic light and shade. In the more complex paintings the narrative is left untold. Merely Illustrating a story is of no interest to me. I want to walk the knifes edge between fracture and narrative: between illustration and formal aesthetics, between what the composition says and what the paintwork says. The surface has to be self-referential as well as being a visual language. I want to leave the viewer to find their own solutions; to allow free reign to the imagination; to force them to extend the painted moment into both the past and future.

Above all I want the paintings to show my continuing obsession with paint as substance. Each work is built up in numerous layers, thick and thin, transparent and opaque- every layer building on the previous and informing the next. It is the sheer physicality and brute practicality of pigment on a flat surface that entrances me far more than mere reportage.