Studio: international art (82.1921)

THE PAINTINGS AND LITHO-
GRAPHS OF STANLEY CURSITER.

THE outstanding features of the art of
Mr. Stanley Cursiter are its vitality
and sincerity. He has not been unaffected
by the art movements of his time and the
theories of the various schools of thought.
But the spirit of enterprise which he has
inherited from the Northmen who
colonised those Scottish Ultima Thule
islands, round which the Atlantic surge
beats so vehemently, kept him alike from
succumbing to traditional methods of ex-
pression and from veiling his personality
by adhesion to new devices which in their
turn have become with so many a con-
vention destructive of individuality. a
Mr. Cursiter had an idea of becoming
an architect and had some training in that
direction, but soon discovered that this
was not to be his metier. He then spent
some years with a large firm of litho-
graphic printers, and in designing posters

had his introduction to colour work. In
this department he acquired a good
knowledge of the technical side of painting
and the effect of the judicious arrange-
ment of masses of pure colour, while it
also taught the value of design in com-
position. He attended the old Edinburgh
School of Art when it was under the charge
of Mr. Blacklock, and made such progress
in pictorial work that when eighteen years
old he was elected a member of the Society
of Scottish Artists, of which he is now
the President. The Academy School,
after a short experience of it, did not appeal
to him, the theories of different visitors
with their diverse views having what he
felt to be a distracting rather than a
guiding influence. During the war Mr.
Cursiter was in France, and while in
Army service he was able to do some
pictorial work, while last year he spent
several months in the South of France
and revelled in the new visions of colour
that its sunny climate afforded him. Most

" DOLCE FAR NIENTE "
BY STANLEY CURSITER

(Paisley Art Gallery)

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