Callum Innes makes work in a number of different ways, all of which are gradually evolving as each new painting builds on those that have gone before in a subtle but constant progression. Innes has probably become best known for his Exposed Paintings series - made by layering pigments onto the canvas and then removing the oil paint with washes of turpentine - though this concern for the processes of painting is shared by his Agitated Verticals, Resonance, Isolated Forms, and Monologue works. The play between additive and subtractive processes means that the potential for uncertainty is ever present within a rigorous visual language.
Callum Innes was born in Edinburgh in 1962 and studied at Gray's School of Art, Aberdeen and Edinburgh College of Art. Innes was short-listed for the Turner and Jerwood Prizes in 1995, won the prestigious NatWest Prize for Painting in 1998, and in 2002 was awarded the Jerwood Prize for Painting. He has exhibited internationally and his work is held in public collections worldwide including the Guggenheim, New York; National Gallery of Australia; TATE, London, The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh; Centre d'Art Pompidou, Paris and The Museum of Modern Art, Fort Worth, USA.
From Memory, a major exhibition of Callum Innes' work over the past 15 years, was shown at The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh in 2006 and toured Modern Art Oxford, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. A major survey exhibition of Innes’ work, I'll Close My Eyes was also presented at the De Pont Museum, Netherlands from the winter of 2016 to spring 2017.
Byzantine Blue, Delft Blue, Paris Blue, a solo presentation of work by Innes opened at Ingleby in May, 2018, as the inaugural exhibition at the gallery's new site, The Glasite Meeting House. Between March - April 2024, Innes exhibited a new body of work at the Kode Museum in Norway, which included a now permanent light installation.