Ken Currie was born in 1960 in North Shields, England, however, was brought up in Glasgow, a city which carries deep associations with the artist. He studied painting at the Glasgow School of Art, graduating in 1983. He is featured in the group known as “The New Glasgow Boys”, alongside Peter Howson, Adrian Wiszniewski and Steven Campbell, who studied contemporaneously at the Glasgow School of Art.
Currie’s relationship with Glasgow Print Studio goes back to the early 80s, and he has published numerous editions with GPS. Currie used industrial Glasgow as the subject of his early work, with paintings that were linear in style and modelled in block-like forms. In the early 1990s, Currie was much affected by political and humanitarian events in Eastern Europe. He began to depict decaying and damaged bodies, as a response to what he felt was the sickness of contemporary society.
Currie’s images have moved from a philosophical outlook which had strong positive dimensions to one characterised by his own term “rational despair”. He has a fatalistic view about human nature; such dark thoughts seem to find their most effective means of expression through the black ink on the etched plate. His art reflects “the dark times” the present world is living through, his titles alone give warning of this.
