STANDING alongside Ken Currie in the workshop on the top floor of Glasgow Print Studio, it is a rare opportunity to hear first-hand from the artist about the techniques involved in his latest collection of new work but also to see the intricate stages of the process.

He reaches into a shelf and produces the copper plate with the original etching of Transformer, the carefully executed fine lines a reverse image of the print that hangs on the wall downstairs.

“Quite often when you see a plate you think it looks fabulous, but it’s not the plate you’re interested in – it’s the print,” he explains. “If the print is not working, you have to go back to solve the problem and find out what is not working.”

Ken Currie: New Etchings and Monotypes is his first exhibition at GPS for 23 years and his first new work on show in Glasgow for more than 13 years.

One of the outstanding figurative painters of his generation, Ken alongside Adrian Wisniewski, the late Steven Campbell, Peter Howson and Stephen Conroy was one of the so-called New Glasgow Boys.

A generation of bold, young figurative painters, launched on to the Scottish art scene with the landmark 1987 exhibition The vigorous Imagination at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, they produced work on a heroic scale often taking their subject matter from working class Scotland.

The medium of etching perfectly complements the dark tones and shadows of Ken’s paintings, producing haunting portraits as well as records of his travels across the Highlands and Outer Hebrides.

Initial marks were made on the images at his Wasps studio on Alexandra Parade in the East End and he then spent an intensive 25 days at Glasgow Print Studio working on 17 plates.

The work produced is a collaboration with the master printmakers based at Trongate 103, he is quick to point out, effusive in his praise of their skills and professionalism.

“Some of prints people make here are jaw-dropping. You must understand you’re in an environment where people really do know what they’re talking about. Be humble and hear what they’ve got to say,” he advises.

“The printmakers have a totally different mindset from the painters. When they start a plate they think, what is going to happen next? Then, what can I do now? They’re working with the plate. Whereas I have an idea and am trying to get the metal to bend to my will.

“With the printmakers here it’s a big journey they take and it can go on for a very long time working on a plate, and they actually like it when it goes wrong because it gives them a chance to solve the problem. That’s the printmaker’s mindset versus the painter’s mindset.”

Ken was invited by GPS to produce the work, which he refers to as a great privilege, with access to the technical expertise of master printers.

With his reputation as a painter, did he enjoy the change of technique?

“Absolutely, it was fantastic, I wish I could do more. It was 1992 I did the last big series, I was more aware of the technicalities of it this time: how you get control of a plate, the things you can do and can’t do, the things you can do when it goes terribly wrong,” he says.

“That very first series was about history and politics, about the Gulf War and what was happening in eastern Europe. Now the themes are much more universal and not so easy to pin down, they are very disparate.

“The things I chose to make were ideas I thought would work as etchings, it wasn’t just taking my normal ideas and throwing them into etchings.”

Many of the works are monoprints, which Ken has painted directly onto the plate and then taken a print off the ink. The one-off print is made before the plate is wiped.

Others are prints of etchings with a short run of just 40. The subtle variations through the edition, because of the way they have been inked, for example, ensures each is fairly unique.

There is an etching, Thomas Muir at Chantilly, based on his recently unveiled painting The Trials of Thomas Muir. Meanwhile the rich, velvety blacks of the finished etching Transformer give added depth.

FB Variations I, II and III continue Ken’s fascination with his hero Francis Bacon. The last pieces of work finished before the opening of the exhibition subtly use two layers of colour with Ken confidently dipping into a blend of oil paint and ink to produce the startling images that catch the eye the minute you walk into the gallery.

Visits to North Uist over a period of two years inspired the macabre image of a row of dead crows hanging on a fence.

“That particular breed of crow isn’t all black, they have grey in them. It was quite beautiful the grey and black contrast. There’s beauty in it as well, which I thought was strange,” he says.

“I’ve never had a chance to get close enough to a crow to study its claws and they are quite extraordinary, they are absolutely amazing structures.”

Much talked about by visitors to the gallery is the collection of landscapes, a whole new direction for the artist best known for his portraits.

“I’ve had quite a lot of experience of landscape in Scotland over the years but I’ve never really been convinced within myself that I had any way of dealing with it through paintings,” he says.

“There are lots of landscape painters that are 10 times better than I would ever be. And there’s also the camera, which is in a way more revealing in many ways.

“I never properly engaged with it. It was only when I was making these monoprints, when I started to manipulate the ink on the plate, I could see that you could suggest very simply and subtly landscape forms. And also figures in the landscape.

“It gave me a chance to exercise a wee bit of feeling I had about being in the north of Scotland and some of the feelings the landscape generates, which aren’t necessarily picturesque.

“It’s quite a dark vision of a very moody changing landscape. Some of it is half imagined as well: the huge moon. It’s not something that you would see but you feel it’s there.”

Ken Currie: New Etchings and Monotypes runs at Glasgow Print Studio, Trongate 103, until October 18. Visit www.glasgowprintstudio.co.uk