Solid Scot

"It's been raining cats & dogs since Saturday," said the chunky young artist, watching the crowds in disbelief. Last week at the third show of his young career, Painter Alan Reynolds, 26, had good reason to be surprised. Even before the formal opening, all but two of his 26 abstract landscape oils had been sold to private previewers. The Arts Council's Sir Kenneth Clark snapped up one; the Tate Gallery's Sir John Rothenstein was almost too late, barely managed to get the picture he wanted. After a week, everything was sold, including all Reynolds' drawings and watercolors, and there was a waiting list of 40 eager patrons, including Actor John Gielgud, Leeds's City Art Gallery and Cambridge's Fitzwilliam Museum.

No Tricks. Reynolds owes his sudden success to no flashy artistic tricks, but to a solid originality that has persuaded London critics to tout him as one of the most promising modern painters, young or old, to turn up in a decade. A blond, open-faced Scot, he first learned about art from his father, who had a passion for Cezanne and Turner. By the time young Alan was twelve, he was working in oils; two years later he was on his own, doing odd jobs (gardening, repairing bicycles, working on road gangs) for the money to paint full time. After a spell as an infantry medic in World War II, he got a government grant to study art, and last year was far enough advanced to win a scholarship at the Royal College of Art, where he still has 2 1/2 years of study ahead of him.

By day, Reynolds painstakingly studies such bygone greats as Donatello and Poussin ("You never get to the end of a bloke like Poussin"), but at night he is his own master, stays up until the late hours painting & repainting his personal phantom world. His fantastic landscapes have the same wonderful eeriness as Graham Sutherland's thorny abstractions, but they are quieter, as delicately brushed as fine Japanese watercolors. In each he takes the ordinary sights of rural England, twists and molds them into subtle generalizations on nature.

Reynolds' stubby hands turn huge trees into strange antler-like fans, fill his canvas with marsh reeds as gaunt and glittering spikes, and dandelions as wildly dancing figures--all in deep green, creamy white, swirls of rich brown, red and yellow. Sometimes he takes the other tack, drains his canvas of color then his moonlight scenes become spooky tangles of waving hop vines, brush piles and squat, triangular chicken houses.

No Dithering. Even after three shows, Reynolds can hardly believe the reviews and the buyers who pay up to -L-100 ($280) for his paintings. He lives in a modest rooming house in a London suburb, still wears his "maternity coat"--a baggy trench coat--and has no illusions about his painting. He doesn't think he is ready yet for figure work, has deliberately concentrated on landscapes and a low-keyed palette until he feels he has a solid background. "There's no good dithering here and dithering there." says Reynolds. "Versatility is a horrible word. You draw and you brood and you try to get something fundamental. Discipline and restraint are the things that count. That is unless you want an emotional orgy--and I don't."

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