Derrick Guild is a Scottish artist whose paintings fragment Old Master works to explore the social fabric beneath.
In his exhibition with us ‘The Look’, two paintings reference portraits by Velazquez of the Infanta Margarita Teresa, daughter of Philip IV, her image adapted to appear as if distributed over a grid of luggage tag labels. The original portraits were intended to advertise the Infanta as ‘on the marriage market’, sent abroad to entice prospective suitors, a literal labelling of the young woman as a vehicle for social climbing that Derrick brings to the fore in his paintings. This grid also acts almost like a cage, the woman inside trapped by social status.A smaller label portrait depicts a self-portrait of Velazquez, whose success at court paradoxically removed him ever further from his painting practice. Social labelling thus becomes social baggage, highlighted through Derrick’s trompe l’oeil technique.
The accompanying arrangements of Lover’s Eyes take fragments from diverse and often unrelated sources – Lely’s ‘Windsor Beauties’ are intermingled, whilst other groups take elements from painters such as Alan Ramsay, Charles Howard Hodges and Henri-Pierre Danloux – mixing subjects, genders, and painterly styles to create new subjects connected by gold chains. Partly this suggests how painting as a language creates connections between seemingly disconnected people in different cultures and eras. The chains also reference David Hume’s ‘Bundle Theory’ of the self being an entity composed of a bundle of chain links, and Milton’s gold chain connecting Earth, Heaven and Hell. Derrick’s arrangements thus allude to how painting can act as a lingua franca, creating connections in a fragmented world and forging new relationships and identities.
