Artist Statement

I am Philip Hutton and these are my paintings.

I was born in Peebles towards the end of the first half of the twentieth century. I went to school in Edinburgh and art college in Aberdeen.  I was an art teacher in Selkirk High, in Borders primary schools, in Borders College and in private classes.  Retired from teaching, I continue to paint and write poems.  I have lived on Peebles High Street for the last forty years.

These paintings are a selection from a large and varied output over many years, paintings of inner worlds and outer circumstances.  Sometimes the outer circumstances are the streets, the river and hillsides immediately around us, and these are the focus of this exhibition.

There are paintings that seek the essential character of the town and display the contrast with the “other place” twenty miles away.

There are paintings that engage with community concerns and anxieties, the swelling suburbanisation, the flood-vulnerable centre, the tensions of environment, private cars and public transport.

There are paintings that show a tiny city – not quaint countrified and folksy but urban European and connected, as are the lives of many residents of this town.