Collection: Bob Bain: Northern Enlightenment - printed works 1975 - 1986

Bob Bain (1949-1989) was an artist and printmaker from Aberdeen, Scotland. He studied at Gray’s School of Art from 1970-75 before teaching printmaking at Peacock (then Peacock Printmakers) from 1975-77. Bain was a lecturer in Art and Design at Aberdeen College of Commerce and exhibited his work regularly in group shows across Scotland. Notably, his prints were part of the Peacock Touring Show of Yugoslavia.

Peacock are custodians of Bob Bain’s printed pieces and hold a significant body of work from his time printing at Peacock. His legacy continues through his visionary linocuts serving as reminders to create work based on an ‘emotional response to nature’s moods’. A true romanticist, Bain’s works are the very embodiment of personal narrative through a printed medium.

This exhibition groups these important works in their entirety for the first time, allowing us to absorb the depth of Bain’s vision, and evaluate his world next to the world we find ourselves in without him.

Bob sadly passed away suddenly aged 40 and as a result the works shown never achieved their full editions. Most of Bob's prints are numbered as editions of 100 - 200 but it's unlikely that in most instances more than 20 were printed. In some cases in may be as few as 2 or 3.

‘I remember lying on my back on a grassy hill oblivious to the earth on which I lay and absorbed by the inky black firmament I gazed at the luminous moon and the bright stars sensing the vastness of the universe outside me and feeling the depth of the void within.’
- Bob Bain, 1986