IAIN FAULKNER
	FOREWORD: IN PUBLIC VIEW Light pours through the plate-glass windows illuminating the public establishments and everyday occurrences in Scottish-born artist Iain Faulkner's genre scenes. The artist, who just recently turned 30 years old, paints some of life's more familiar moments - ones that we have all experienced. These events and interactions are not by their very nature essentially noteworthy or momentous. Yet, with a masterful use of light and a deftness of composition, he has created for the viewer a sense of inclusion, intimacy and importance in an instance now worth capturing. Faulkner invites us not only to observe but also to participate in a scene which we might have simply passed by, lost in our own world, without a second glance. It is not possible to walk by the woman in clad in red, in the work entitled "Seated for Lunch," without glancing in her direction. Compositionally, the painting is a wonderful melange of geometric shapes balanced in an asymmetrical pattern. This attractive woman, dressed in such a provocative color, and the waiter seating her are silhouetted against the white light filtering through the glass, which then in turn is framed by the black border of the doorway. In this masterful way, Faulkner creates drama where it might not ordinarily exist. Now the artist has drawn us in, and we can't help but wonder why, dressed as she is, is she alone...for the moment? The diffused lighting of the architecture outside lends an exotic and foreign air adding to the elegance of the overall composition. In the painting entitled "Preparing for Lunch" we, like Faulkner's subject, are literally on the inside looking out. The artist intrigues us with our new surroundings, as he positions our observation point just behind the gentleman in the suspenders. We now see the world as he does, in a bit of a daydream perhaps, as the hatted stranger at the window passes by. We peer out trying to identify the neighborhood and our location. For this remarkably talented young artist, the essential element of his work is not about the narrative, the story he is telling, but about transporting us through light and shadow to another place and circumstance, one that is familiar yet new. In his latest body of work Iain Faulkner continues to exhibit an exemplary painting technique that underscores his singular vision. He meshes the influence of both European and American masters such as Vermeer and Sargent along with the Scottish traditions of classical figurative art, particularly apparent in his Glasgow roots. Iain Faulkner is a graduate of the Glasgow School of Art, receiving his Bachelor's Degree in 1996. In the less than ten years since his graduation, he has had multiple exhibitions in England, Scotland, Spain and the United States. As in the past, Faulkner's most recent paintings continue to fascinate - with an uncommon ability to heighten common events.
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