A GLASGOW artist launched his latest show outlining the decade since his graduation.

Brooding dark portraits progress to intimate profiles then bold splashes of colour across fishing boats and seaside scenes.

Paul Kennedy's new exhibition charts the past 10 year since he graduated from Edinburgh College of Art.

"A lot of the work people won't have seen before," he explains as we walk around the recently opened Leiper Fine Art gallery in West George Street.

"The show is a story of my life, places I have travelled to, friends I have known, places I have escaped to.

"There is a little nod to other shows I have done - there are prints of paintings that were in previous exhibitions - but the thing that keeps coming back again and again is the figurative work and trying to evoke a sense of being a Glaswegian in my own city and doing that through people I know."

Most of the paintings were completed in the past five years, though some first took shape a long time before.

The oil on canvas Correspondence, a thoughtful portrait of a girl sitting at a desk, pen and paper in hand, was taken from a photograph in 2005 of an artist Paul was working with on a community artwork project.

"A few years later I became a finalist in the Aspect Prize and needed lots of different ideas for paintings," explains Paul.

"I tried to paint this before and I couldn't do the body at the time as I hadn't picked a big enough canvas.

"I went back to it a few years later for the Aspect Prize."

Paul's talent for figurative work shines through in every brushstroke.

The painting simply called Colin, with those piercing eyes, is probably the most intense portrait Paul has ever done, he says.

Again, Paul photographed his friend, this time at a bleak moment in the middle of winter when Colin was concerned about his mother's health.

The pensive mood is intriguing, drawing you into the painting.

The portrait of a young man taking a moment to enjoy the play of sunlight shining through a window was taken from a set of photographs for a commission.

"When I paint someone and I don't know the person I put my own feeling into it. It might be a moment you experience sitting down in the sun, having time out. It's not a deep thought-provoking piece," says Paul.

"The viewer doesn't need to know the person just to share the warmth of that feeling when you get a bit of sunlight on a dull afternoon and can sit down and just enjoy that moment."

The life of an artist is never easy and the highs and lows of Paul's own life are reflected in his work.

Though the oil on canvas Urban Blues is a dark portrait of a young man, there is no black in the painting.

Paul was drawn to the photograph of a friends' friend. Taken at a party with a light above his head, it cast a raw, red hue over his face.

"He looked like he'd been crying and I thought, I need to paint what I feel. So I tried to paint the feeling rather than anything else.

"This is the saddest painting of the show; when something has gone wrong, things aren't working and nothing is going right for you. You've got to pick yourself up and face a new day."

Spirits are raised with the nearby painting New Day, showing a girl opening the blinds with shafts of light flooding in.

He added: "It's such an intense painting but the content is actually very subtle.

"It is all about positive thoughts, that lovely feeling in the morning when you open the blinds and the light flows in.

"That feeling of a new start, that moment when you have time to enjoy the morning."

A corner of the gallery is filled with paintings of Berwickshire fishing village St Abbs, the place for family holidays as a child for Paul and now somewhere to recharge his batteries.

Fishing boats, harbour scenes and a landscape overlooking the bay are filled with light and colour. Some of these, as well as Paul's familiar trams and painting of tall ship the Glenlee, are available in prints.

"Colour has always been bursting to come out," he said.

"I used to have a tiny pocket of colour in a painting and the rest was really dark. When I was doing these landscapes and boats the colours really came out."

"I would definitely say in the past five years my work has become more vibrant and expressive.

"That doesn't necessarily mean it is being drawn looser, it is just the confidence to not actually make things photorealist, just apply the paint loosely and leave it."

angela.mcmanus@eveningtimes.co.uk

n Decade runs at Leiper Fine Art, 117 West George Street, Glasgow, until August 17. Visit www.leiperfineart.com