Edinburgh Art Festival

Leon Morrocco has been long renowned for his colourful, joyful depictions of the everyday life of the warmer climes.  Born in Edinburgh, the grandson of Italian immigrants, the heat of the Mediterranean is in his blood.  Long family holidays spent in Italy cultivated his earliest drawings and from time spent living abroad, first in Milan then in Melbourne, he garnered a thirst for travel that would see him visit Morocco, India and Cuba. The Mediterranean, however, always remained a constant.
 
The long-term illness of his beloved wife Jean saw him take an eventual hiatus from his travels, instead the river, barges and working boatyards of his home city of London became the subject of his sketches and canvases, his palette a little more muted but still full of energy.  After Jean’s death in 2016 Leon felt ready to travel again and in 2017 he set the compass back to the Mediterranean.
 
This exhibition is a celebration of Morrocco’s fresh vigour for travel, both at home and away, transporting the viewer from the harbours around his childhood home of Dundee - Arbroath, Buckie, Piteenweem and Fraserburgh, to the sun-drenched South of France, via Malta, Portugal and Italy. A feast for the senses, these works reveal both his outstanding draughtsmanship and his passion for colour.