Exhibition: A Drunk Man Looks At The Thistle

Alexander Moffat brings a new exhibition to the Scottish Storytelling Centre on the High Street, running from 6 November to 6 December. It's called A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle, and the title comes from the poem that's at the heart of the whole thing.

That poem is Hugh MacDiarmid's A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle, first published in 1926 and written in MacDiarmid's synthetic Scots. This exhibition marks its centenary, and the paintings on the walls follow the poet's life and circle. Moffat's work here stretches from 1978, when he drew MacDiarmid at home in Brownsbank Cottage near Biggar, right through to the present. It doesn't stop with the man himself, either; the show includes portraits of MacDiarmid's close 'Border Guards', William Johnstone and Francis George Scott, who helped launch the Scottish Renaissance of the early 1920s. Scott was MacDiarmid's schoolteacher in Langholm, and he's the one who dreamed up the image of a drunk man looking at a thistle and helped shape the poem's final structure.

Knowing a bit about Moffat helps place the work. Born in Dunfermline, he studied at Edinburgh College of Art from 1960 to 1964 and emerged alongside John Bellany as one of the Scottish Realists. They were known for their social awareness and for rejecting the decorative principles that had dominated Scottish art in the first half of the century. From 1979, Moffat taught at Glasgow School of Art, where he inspired a new generation of figurative painters, including Peter Howson, Ken Currie and Steven Campbell.

The exhibition is part of the Carrying Stream Festival 2026. It runs from 10am to 6pm daily, 6 November through 6 December, at the Scottish Storytelling Centre, 43-45 High Street in the Old Town, and entry is free.