To coincide with the Edinburgh Marathon Festival this weekend, local artist Damian Callan is installing a 10-metre charcoal drawing entitled ‘The Dalry Marathon’ in the airport’s art gallery today and The Edinburgh Reporter met up with him to see how it was taking shape.
Damian started the mural in October last year . Then he used models in his studio as the runners and supports in the picture, but he now wants to complete it using the airport’s passengers as inspiration. Over the first 2 days 54 figures were accumulated, as well as an Edinburgh skyline.
The artwork is being installed this week, and will be in the airport for a further 2 weeks. The idea is that it will then be sold for charity. Damian will be working on the drawing live in the departure lounge on Friday and next Monday using the large crowds of passengers (with hundreds of likely runners and spectators among them) as inspiration. There should have a large number of runners and spectators travelling through the airport over the next week or so.
The airport’s art gallery is in the departure lounge and is managed by one of the airport’s Commercial Account Manager’s, Jan Riley. Jan actually ran a marathon for charity about 7 years ago and held a mini art auction to raise funds – some of Damian’s artwork was featured in this and one of his pieces was the first to be sold in the airport’s gallery when it opened.
Here’s the website for the airport gallery: http://www.theairportgallery.com/ and here is Damian Callan\s own website. www.damiancallan.com
Founding Editor of The Edinburgh Reporter.
Edinburgh-born multimedia journalist and iPhoneographer.
