JAMES Spence, died aged 86, was an artist and teacher who became an established figure on the Scottish art scene when he co-founded the Glasgow Group, an artists' cooperative which promotes the work of artists who were born, live or trained in the city. It was founded in the 1950s as a response to the conservative outlook of local exhibitions and the lack of commercial galleries.

The son of Highland fisherfolk from Findhorn who travelled south to Glasgow, much of James Spence's subject matter could be traced to his childhood experiences - an evening at an open air boxing match in Glasgow, for example, the fighter silhouetted in brilliant light, a mass of crimson blood covering the face of one man. He was also inspired by the landscape of the north-west Highlands.

On the death of his mother when he was still young, Jim and his sister were evacuated to Aberdeenshire, leaving from Bridgeton Cross. When they arrived at Alford, all the evacuees were placed in the church hall, labels and all. The local people then arrived to choose their children and Jim and his sister were selected by the minister's wife. They then went to stay in the manse, but after the minister's wife discovered she could get twice the allowance taking in English evacuees, Jim and his sister were sent to the home of the gravedigger instead. James remembered him as a large and kindly man, with heavy studded boots curling forwards and upwards

When he was 14 years old and in the days before antibiotics, the young Jim contracted tuberculosis and was hospitalised at Inverurie. Most of the patients were military men and prisoners of war Germany - another patient had fought for Franco in the Spanish civil war. The POWs taught Jim much more than school could offer him - he studied science, Spanish, music, chess, and he took a correspondence in art - watercolour - and had an endless supply of willing models.

He then wanted to study medicine but was refused by the medical board - with the loss of a diseased lung, his life expectancy was considered to be 27 to 30 years.

He then contacted Jefferson Barnes at Glasgow School of Art and was accepted immediately on the strength of his watercolour portraits. With Alasdair Gray, he founded a debating society which won second prize in the Observer trophy. Hugh MacDiarmid also encouraged and recommended them and in their third year, they were taught by Donaldson Squires, William and Mary Armour and Benno Schotz. The doors of imagination had finally been opened.

With his wife Anda, he then spent the summers of 1956 and 57 studying at Hospitalfield House School of Art in Arbroath, where he was tutored by Mclaughin Milne, whose knowledge of Scottish artists Peploe, Cadell, and Fergusson was considerable.

While there, James Spence and Anda realised how uneasy they were with the art scene in Glasgow and with James Morrison, founded the young Glasgow Group, which consisted of 13 like-minded artists, friends and fellow students.

His work as a painter was inspired by Scotland but also by his travels abroad. In 1959, he visited Spain were he saw his first bullfight to the sound of the pasodoble. The initial impression of carnival changed to one of increasing horror as the magnificent animal was tormented, tortured and killed and he made studies of the bullfight in oil, watercolour and mezzotint.

He then started to teach in the east end of Glasgow, which was excellent preparation for becoming president of the Glasgow Group - a position he held for 33 years, with the endless support of Hilda Butler and William Burnie. On becoming principal of art at Dumbarton Academy, his great pleasure and ambition was to teach etching, lithography, sculpture, woodcut and life drawing.

His two loves were Iberia with its mixture of Arabian and European culture and the north-west of Scotland, where he would translate the violent skies into paintings that expressed the changing moods of an area. “It is an area I have been fascinated with for some 50 years,” he said. “The mood of the area and the skies of the Outer Hebrides are a constant theme for me. They have the most wonderful skies in the world.”

[Glasgow Herald June 2016]