George Leslie Reekie (1911-1969)

               George Reekie was a technically skilful Scottish artist who primarily created still-life and flower paintings in oils. His works are valued for their impressive verisimilitude that preserve the natural in a moment for continual appreciation and contemplation.

They are a modern iteration of a long artistic lineage that goes back to the works of the Dutch masters of still-life and flowers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These artists and their patrons were fascinated by the natural world following the Age of Discovery and advances in botany as a scientific pursuit. Pictures of flowers and still-life arrangements of vegetables and fruits also gave the artists opportunity to demonstrate their technical skill in the recreation of textures and colours, and even provided an opportunity to appropriately convey symbolic messages of a spiritual or personal nature in a society in which depictions of overtly religious subjects had become taboo following the Reformation.

Reekie’s own images are not so symbolically obvious, but the details of his paintings, such as suspended droplets of water and fallen petals, are clearly laden with meaning however ambiguous. His works appear in private and public collections including the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum in Bournemouth.