Looking back with Ian Scott on Grangemouth's cultural stars including Alan Davie and the Cocteau Twins

This time the topic was culture and Geoff Bailey began by describing external public art in the town of which there is a great deal and the stained glass that beautifies our churches and public buildings. My job was to add a word or two about the individuals whose work brought distinction to the community and still does.

Among them was Tommy Whittle, one of Britain’s greatest ever jazz saxophonists, who began life (like Alan Davie) in Victoria Road. Then we had the master musicians of Muirhead’s Pipe Band who won the World Championship an astonishing eight times, the brilliant Young Portonians founded over 40 years ago by Lilias and Drew Scougall and the hugely talented Grangemouth Choral Society who are as popular today as at any time in their long history.

But my main focus was on two very different art forms which brought the name of Grangemouth to the world beyond our doors. Alan Davie was one of Scotland’s greatest artists whose unusual and challenging work can be found in galleries all across Europe and the USA. His father James was an art teacher in the town and an artist with an international reputation. His work was representational but Alan’s imagination was caught by abstract and impressionist painting from his days as a student in Edinburgh. From this he evolved his own style which blossomed in the 1950s and which some critics have called “magical realism”. In his later years – he died in 2014 at the age of 93 – he was famous for work that drew on mystical and universal symbols found in cultures from all corners of the world today and in the past. In 1975 he designed a work for his home town which the genius ceramicist George Garson turned into the huge mosaic now on display in La Porte Precinct.

In the mid 1970s following the punk boom, a couple of Grangemouth musicians – Robin Guthrie and Will Heggie began to make a new kind of music which like Davie’s art owed much to what had gone before but with a new sound with songs that challenged the establishment in much the way that punk had done before. When they “discovered” a young female singer called Elizabeth Fraser with a stunning voice and an unusual singing style – like a musical instrument some said – the Cocteau Twins were born. In 1982 their first album Garlands was an immediate hit and began two decades in which the Twins built up a huge following across the world with their unique sound making dozens of highly successful recordings. Although they stopped performing as a group many years ago they have a loyal fan base not least in their home town.

Interestingly both the Cocteau Twins and Alan Davie said of their very different art forms “Do not ask what it is all about. Just let it wash over you and you will get the message”. Now I admit I am a bit set in my ways and it has taken me a very long time to give the washing over technique a fair chance. However over the last few weeks I have tried hard and must admit that I am beginning to see what all those dedicated followers have experienced. Am I a convert? Well not completely but I think I’m getting there.