Fallen Angels

This text offers a collection of paintings by the neo-realist Jack Vettriano. The editor has also woven an anthology of old and new writing around the the painter's images, complementing them, matching their moods, and extending the lives of the characters beyond their frozen moments on canvas. Vettriano's images are real in the sense that he portrays recognizable people in believable situations. They are tales without text, storyboards about love and lust, possession and longing, pursuit and conquest.

Vettriano is an enigma. A Scotsman of Italian descent, he was a mine worker who simply "decided to be a painter." With no formal training, he came up with a noirish style reminiscent of Hopper, Sickert, and 1940s Hollywood movies. Vettriano paints vignettes of people engaged in erotic and dangerous activities. His male characters, and they do seem like characters right out of Raymond Chandler, are decked out in fedoras and well-cut suits; his elegant women are also calculatingly sartorial, but their silk and wool slide open to reveal dramatic lingerie. And everyone smokes; everyone is candescent. Vettriano's interiors--hotel rooms, discrete restaurants, elegant bordellos--have the strangely lightless light the indoors have on a brilliantly sunny day and his exteriors--windy, wintry beaches--also have the aura of the forbidden. His paintings demand a story, so editor W. Gordon Smith invited a group of Scottish writers to respond with a poem, short story, or excerpt from a novel or a play. This literary accompaniment does, in some instances, enhance the experience of gazing at these brooding and alluring paintings, but most readers will prefer their own interpretations. Donna Seaman