Colour In Silence: Memorial Exhibition

Colour In Silence opens at Summerhall on 29 October, a memorial exhibition of the work of David Peacock (1945–2025). It runs through to 1 November in the Sciennes Galleries, and entry is free.

There are more than 40 paintings on the walls, alongside a video box of film and stills. It's a substantial showing, and one that pulls from across his life rather than just his final years. Peacock first showed in public at the Talbot Rice Gallery in 1996, and this is his third solo show since then. His work is held in private collections across the UK, as well as in NHS and L'Arche locations.

To understand the paintings, it helps to know how they came about. Peacock began painting large acrylic canvases in the 1990s while in the NHS Art Therapy unit at Gogarburn Hospital. For a long time, his style settled around horizontal stripes of colour, a steady, rhythmic approach that he returned to again and again. That changed in 2016 when he entered Leith School of Art, where he spent nearly a decade diversifying his style and the materials he worked with. The exhibition lets you see both sides of that shift: the earlier, striped work and the later, more varied pieces.

Peacock was a non-verbal autistic man with learning disabilities, and he communicated through his art. He lived seventeen happy and creative years as a member of the L'Arche community in Leith, and that community is part of the story here. The show is at the Sciennes Galleries, 1 Summerhall, EH9 1PL, from 29 October to 1 November, and it's free to enter.