John Bellany Untitled, 1970

This 1970 painting is an example of the development of John Bellany's personal symbolic repertoire. Bellany grew up in Port Seton, Scotland, with the religious and seafaring environments pivotal elements in his work. The experience of living in an isolated community with a powerful Protestant culture is highlighted throughout his narrative and autobiographical paintings. This work features a veiled woman with her breasts exposed, surrounded by a seagull, a skate, and a puffin, watched from above by a bearded man wearing a paper boat hat, alluding to the artist himself.

The group stands within green setting, interior and exterior ambigiously portrayed as is the portentous bed-like horizontal surface behind which the figures are positioned. The woman and the puffin are mute and silenced, while the commanding seagull squawks and the skate looks directly towards the viewer with an anxious smile of what might transpire. Bellany refused to discuss the meanings behind the specific symbols in his work because he wanted them to be visually engaging and open-ended, yet recurring iconographic themes can be recognized.

As with his many other paintings of fishermen, Bellany appears to use fish as a means of expressing the emotion of his painting's subjects. The skate is also suggestive of sexual connotations within Bellany's oeuvre, allowing the artist to explore the taboo area of sexual dreams and desires. Objects placed on heads is a recurring motif, suggesting both burdens and symbols of strength. The bearded figure observes the scene yet hides his whole presence, reinforcing the sexual guilt and fear ingrained from Bellany's Calvinistic upbringing.