Hugh Buchanan was born in Edinburgh in 1958. The city instilled in him a love of architecture which he developed as a student of Drawing and Painting at Edinburgh College of Art. Best known for his light filled interiors he began to paint libraries and archives in 2008. His exhibition, The Esterhazy Archive at Summerhall, 2013, led to an invitation from the National Library of Scotland to paint compositions of the John Murray Archive leading to an exhibition at the National Library in 2015.
In 2017 his exhibition NewTown at the Scottish Gallery celebrated 250 years of Edinburgh's New Town. In his 2019 exhibition, Capital City, he experimented with horizontal textures, leading to work on corrugated cardboard, through which he reinterpreted the work of the woodcarver Grinling Gibbons at his tercentenary exhibition in Dalkeith in 2022.
Moonlit Window.
The artist - Although not originally intended to be anywhere specific, the more I worked on the edition the more it became an Edinburgh window. A half remembered glimpse over the Forth, from what could be any number of lofty New Town flats. Illuminated by a mixture of moonlight and sodium streetlight, the horizontal striations of the corduroy suggest an image as if seen through a faulty TV monitor or security camera. The image is created with stencils and rollers. By varying the pressure and application of paint distant watery landscapes can be conjured up through the window.