Page 20 - Art First: Helen MacAlister: The Glamour of Backwardness

AF HM catalogue 2023 PRINT.qxp_Layout 1 15/06/2023 17:36 Page 18

Imaginative Identification

2018, oil on linen diptych, each panel 29.7 x 21 cm (a4)

‘To see one’s own life through poetry or fiction was then as easy as it is for us to view our lives in terms
of what we see on screen. Even Gilbert, who understood this kind of imaginative identification, was
struck by the vehemence of it in his brother. He hints that Burns’s passions were moulded at least
as much by literature as by life’
Robert Crawford, The Bard, p.79