If Macintosh is visible everywhere, Gray's sphere of influence is the Glasgow of the mind. Quite a feat, when you think of it, for the vision of another to overlay the recollections of the place where I was born, grew up and lived in (or near) till I was 27. No that his hand is invisible in the city - his paintings, portraits and sketches are found in various art galleries. His murals are easier to find (and enjoy), mainly in and around Byres Road, Hillhead. Gray painted the murals in the Ubiquitious Chip in Ashton Lane (not for money, reportedly, but for meals). More recently, he has painted the murals in Oran Mor, on the corner of Byres Road and Great Western Road. In the photo above, Gray is standing in front of one of his murals there (yes - it's a golden lion playing the bagpipes).
Anthony Burgess, in his list of the 99 greatest novels written in English since 1945, called it the "shattering work of fiction in the modern idiom" that Scotland needed, compared the book itself to James Joyce's Ulysses and proclaimed Alasdair Gray "the best Scottish novelist since Walter Scott". It is hard to understate its importance in the recent renaissance of writing in Scotland - and not just the renaissance of writing, either.
Postscript: this time, I didn't catch sight of the great man himself.
Visit Alasdair Gray's official website - and (probably) the best unofficial Alasdair Gray site on the web, Lanark 1982.
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