Biography
Alasdair Gray was born in Glasgow in 1934 into a working-class family, his father a factory worker and his mother working in a clothing warehouse. After years of moving around the country due to the evacuation efforts in the Second World War, Gray’s family settled down in Riddrie, where he attended Whitehill Secondary School and won prizes for art and English- an early indicator of his artistic interests. These were furthered by his fondness for the works of Edgar Allen Poe, which became a great influence on his works later in life.
When he turned 18 he enrolled in the Glasgow School of Art, graduating with a degree in Design and Mural Painting, then working as a freelance artist, specialising in murals and gaining recognition for their intricacies and his eye for detail. Outside of murals, perhaps his most well-known body of work is from his time as Glasgow’s ‘artist recorder’, creating hundreds of drawings of notable people, places, and the general public. Over the decades, his work would be shown in such notable galleries as The Tate, Scottish National Galleries, Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Hunterian Museum.