Highland art dealer Tony Davidson tells a story of creating a home for art that would become Kilmorack Gallery near Beauly
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At the start of his book Confessions Of A Highland Art Dealer, Tony Davidson takes you back in time to the first moment he met what would become Kilmorack Gallery.
He writes: “We drive in convoy to the church. Black Allan in a small maroon van, tilted to one side and me in an old, almost-ready-to-ditch Ford Sierra. We are like kids on bikes – practical vehicles taking us through a magical world. The old church belongs to Black Allan. I didn’t question why he had it. It’s just what Black Allan does. He collects neglected and wonderful things, a magpie of the mysterious. This is his hidden jewel and I am about to be stunned.”
That was in 1995 and after deciding to turn the old church near Beauly into an art gallery, Tony had to seek planning permission for change of use, find artists he wanted to show, and get the gallery ready for its grand opening in 1997.
Since then, he has weathered ups and downs – surviving change and embracing technology, as the subtitle of his book describes, it has been “A Journey In Art, A Glen And Changing Times”.
But why, looking back, did he end up running a gallery in the first place?
“It was just one of these things, it was a bit like writing the book, I just sort of did it.
“I was wanting to find my own thing, my own place.
“I guess I was always looking for something. I was always going to try and do something beautiful. So it just worked out that way.
“If things were going to be run again, I might have been an artist.
“But you couldn’t do art in our school. If you could do science, you weren’t allowed to do art.”
He adds, slightly regretfully: “I was good at art. But the only time I was allowed to do it was in sixth year at school.
“I got top of the year in everything, but got thrown out of school for doing caricatures of all the teachers in the staffroom. Some of them were slightly erotic…”
Tony – who is dyslexic – revealed he wrote his book which describes the artists he encounters, the clients who buy their work and the unfolding story of Kilmorack, by getting up at five in the morning and writing till eight.
But Tony is not sure why he started writing it.
“I can’t really give you a good answer, that’s like the gallery. I just got up one morning and started. There are so many stories that I could write the whole thing again and not repeat anything.”
The book is surreal and magical, painting in jewel colours a lost world of eccentrics and artistic endeavour, lyrically describing the natural world, spare and drily funny in its pen portraits of one-off characters.
There is possibly a follow-up title in the pipeline, and though his book is for sale on Amazon, Tony says the best place to get it is from the gallery itself.
“Some people have come and bought 10 copies at a time!” he marvels.
In recent years, Tony and the gallery have embraced the possibilities of technology. He photographs the artists’ work to put up on a website the world can see in the morning and a piece can be sold by lunchtime, as he describes in the book. There, he briefly shares the learning process of how to present the work after experimenting and finding the way to make it looks its best on a website.
“Yes, a sort of ‘how to’ for somebody coming in, how to learn to do it, how to repeat the Kilmorack thing,” he said.
“But the truth is, you can’t repeat it – you need somebody insane at the helm!
“Not many people are doing unusual things these days and the world is becoming boring and monotonous.
“People have to be allowed to follow the crooked path, so the book is kind of a call to that.”
• Tony Davidson’s Confessions Of A Highland Art Dealer (Woodwose Books, £8.99) is on sale at the Kilmorack Gallery, near Beauly, and on Amazon.
