Fidra Fine Art has been a fixture in the small and inviting East Lothian town of Gullane for 12 years now. It takes its name from the Bass Rock’s slightly stockier, more media-shy neighbour, the uninhabited island off the town’s coast, which nevertheless enjoys popularity as a rich source of sustenance for seabirds, snap-happy tourists and East Lothian artists. Alan Rae, the owner and manager of the traditional-and-contemporary gallery, knows them all well by now: he’s very much at home in Fidra.

Alan has the pedigree of a true ally: a lover of art as a young boy; a collector as a young man; and now, from 2012, an enthusiastic dealer who once transformed his own home into an art gallery when a lease agreement was snatched from him. Sincere and unpretentious in conversation, he is perfectly at home in his attractive gallery on Gullane’s Main Street: a bit fishy perhaps (dare I strain the coastal theme?) for a man who claims victimhood to imposter syndrome. He is in fact a seasoned dealer with a good strong eye and a finger on the pulse, still motivated by that sincere passion which has guided him along his rather unconventional route.

Douglas Erskine visited Alan at Fidra Fine Art for a refreshing and down-to-earth conversation about the path he’s trodden and the business of running a commercial art gallery in 2024.

Alan, let’s start at the beginning. How did your interest in art begin? And how did Fidra come into being in the first place?

Well, my dad, Jim Rae, painted all his life. Marine and aviation stuff. Quite illustrative. I grew up with his painting so it rubbed off on me. I'm colour blind, so I always struggled with painting at school, but I could draw a bit. I've always been interested in art. And then my brother was a framer at St Andrews Fine Art, which was a fantastic gallery. It was on three different levels inside but quite a small shop front in St Andrews. You would go down a level and there would be a lot of old, traditional and Victorian pieces, McTaggarts and the like. Some things you hadn't heard of, but it was all really good, interesting stuff. And as you went up, it got more modern - Bellanys and Eardleys. It was all crammed in, no wall space left at all. It was like a second-hand bookshop, that was the way I used to think of it. Jim Carruthers sourced much of the work from auctions. But there would also be paintings by artists like Davy Brown and other contemporaries that he might sell or return, but quite often he would buy direct from the artist. He might buy 20 pieces - he used to do that with a few of the artists. He was really supportive of some of these artists. It was always really exciting going in there because there was so much to see and everything was different – the traditional and the contemporary.

I was working down south for a bank for some years. It wasn’t anything I really wanted to do, but that was where I ended up. So I would come up to Scotland now and again, see Mum and Dad, then go along to some of these exhibitions. I bought a Henry Wright Kerr. It was an old man with a red tammy. A portrait. It was a really cheeky, grinning face. Just brilliant. It was dated to 1920 or something like that. And it was £1600. I remember I went into the gallery, and then I went out again, and I just thought “I can't afford this… there’s no way I can afford this!” Then I went to the pub, had a couple of pints, and then I went back to gallery and thought “go for it”. I was probably 30 or 35 years old and I'd never spent any money like that before on art. And two weeks later, you start to realise… I'm still eating… no one's arrested me… And I've got this lovely picture! I didn’t feel any buyer’s remorse. I then started looking into Henry Wright Kerr, seeing he's got quite a few things in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, and then you find out a little bit about his history, who he taught, who taught him, and then it just spreads. It became a bit of an obsession. I bought a couple of other things from St Andrews Fine Art, including a lovely Donald McIntyre which I've still got. Then I started following the auctions in Edinburgh and down south and buying there. Back then, it was so much easier to get things if you were interested in them. I was buying quite a few pictures, but nothing really expensive. A few hundred quid each. Then I started getting more serious. I bought a couple of pictures by Houston, Phillipson, Bellany, Michie for two or three grand each, something like that. There was something special about being able to own these artists work… history. Then I thought, “I really enjoy this. I'd like to get a gallery at some point, maybe”.

I then started thinking about business plans and cash flows, worrying about it, worrying about it. I was still buying, but by now I was buying with a view to slowly building up stock for a gallery, if I ever had one. If it didn’t happen, fine, I’d keep the picture. I hummed and hawed about making that jump. It was really difficult to move out of a perfectly well-paid job into something you had no idea how to start, something you'd never done before. But things were changing at work. By this time, I was working at British Aerospace in aircraft leasing. I was in their contract department. I was managing deliveries of aircraft, swapping of engines, insurance and so on. I had moved up to North Berwick and I was working from home. I was self-employed but on a contract with them, so everything was fine and relatively lucrative. But it wasn't doing anything for me, and while working from home I could feel the politics changing. And at the same time I was getting more interested in the gallery. I soon thought “right, I've got to get out of here”. So I gave them six months’ notice and I found a property for the business in North Berwick. We were negotiating the lease at the same time as we were moving house. So it was all coming together at the same time. We had almost agreed the terms of the lease and the seller said “I've decided to sell it to the guy next door”. So I'm left high and dry. I’ve handed in my notice. I’ve just moved into a new house. I remember sitting in the back garden with my wife and a bottle of wine, and saying “what am I going to do now?” And she said “why don’t you just open it in the house?”

Graeme Wilcox, Sleepwalker, oil on canvas, 39.5cm x 39.5cm

It was quite a big house, with a large drawing room at the front and a hallway leading off the main door. When my wife said “why don't we just start it in there and see how it goes”, that's what we did. I got Mike Stoane, a pal who has a lighting business, to help me out with the lighting. He’s done work for the National Gallery, the Portrait Gallery and the like, so it was all good stuff. It was all second-hand or spares but it’s all still going strong now. We launched Fidra Fine Art from our own home in 2012. The opening show was all things that I had sourced. Traditional and contemporary, all hung up in the drawing room. A lot of people from North Berwick came in, friends were very supportive, and we sold a few pieces. Then you think “what am I going to do now? All my stock’s in there. What do you do next month?” I’d spent years trying to plan all this and then, after one month, I realised you can't go and buy an unending amount of stock. You want to keep things fresh, but you haven’t got the money to do that. It was actually around about then that George Birrell came in. He knocked on the front door and I recognised him, though he didn’t know I knew who he was. “You’re George Birrell!”. So he came in and I had a George Birrell on my wall, which I still have, which I bought at auction. “That’s one of mine!” We got chatting. There was work by Bellany and artists like that in the show, a good mix of some well-known artists George liked, so I asked if he would consider showing his work. I ended up taking a couple of George's pictures for the next show. He has been very supportive. Then Alan Connell, another artist who lives down in North Berwick, came along. He knew Joe Urie. Quite early on, I had Joe Urie as one of the first solo shows in the gallery. I had lots of big Joe Uries in this big drawing room – it was brilliant. And by putting that on, Graeme Wilcox and Simon Laurie and a few other artists who knew Joe came over, and I started getting to know them. Their work ended up in mixed shows. All of a sudden, the word was out that I was connected with some of these people. It all began to grow.

It was all quite organic and quite unexpected… and lucky! I didn't set out with an aim or a goal or anything like that, as you always get taught when you’re writing business plans. I remember my accountant, who enjoyed art as well and who collected a bit, eventually saying “oh for goodness sake, just do it!” He said, “just run the business off your bank account, don't worry about your cash flow and all that sort of stuff. Just do it. And if you've got money in your bank account at the end of the month, you're still in business”. And that's basically how it started and how it grew. You end up putting quite a few things by Graeme, Simon and others into mixed shows, you’re still buying a few more, and very quickly, the whole thing gets taken over by contemporary artists. You get to know these people and they want to show because you’ve also got John Bellany, Houston, Colquhoun and so on, on the same wall. And now I've got quite a lot of older pieces - Bellanys, Kerrs, John Blairs - in a room somewhere, and I can't really get them out into the gallery because it's so full of contemporary work!

George Birrell, Village Garden, oil on linen, 51cm x 51cm

So as much as you admired the mixture of work at St Andrews Fine Art, and although you began Fidra by sourcing work from the secondary market, things have changed. Did you find it at all difficult to reorient Fidra in the direction of a predominantly contemporary gallery?

I don't think I really noticed it. You just move along with things. You react. You realise you’ve got to get a show for next month, so what are we going to do? You're speaking to people like George about a solo show and a demo, and he says “yeah, let's go for it!” We ended up doing these things in my house in the evenings. So there wasn't really a sense of any tension or anything like that. But I was still buying more traditional things all the time. Right at the beginning I didn't have any money for it, but that changed as time passed, especially since my overheads were so low, operating from home. I didn't take any money out of the business. I didn't pay myself a salary for three years or something. Any money that was going in was building it all up. It got to a stage where I was quite happy to go out and buy pieces that I would keep for myself but which I’d sell through the business if I had the opportunity. So there was still a mixture, even then. If I had a drawing show, I’d have contemporary artists putting in drawings, but I’d also include some of the ones that I owned, like a Colquhoun or a MacBryde, to mix things up. People who are showing next to Colquhoun and MacBryde are flattered to be on the wall with these kinds of artists. And that's the kind of gallery that I want to go and see. I want to go and see contemporary artists along with the greats. That’s what gives me a buzz. You can see these things and you can own these things. They’re part of history. That's what gets me up in the morning, really.

So although Fidra’s walls might often be full of contemporary work, it does still have a reputation as a gallery which is traditional, too. Is it that sort of fusion which gives Fidra its distinctive character? It’s all about your choice and your taste after all, whatever that might embrace.

I want there to be that fusion, but it’s sometimes difficult. I’m determined to put more traditional works into the gallery but I always seem to get pulled away towards contemporary artists. Daily, almost, you've got contemporary artists looking to show in the gallery. It can be a challenge to balance it. I’ve got a work on paper show coming up at the end of the year and I've got a really good group of contemporary artists, but I’m really keen to add in Muirhead Bone, James McBey, Iain Macnab, Bellany maybe. Some cracking stuff. So that I'm looking forward to. I’ll probably sneak a few more traditional pictures into summer and winter shows too. I want there to be a bit of…. “ta-da!” I’ve got quite a few pictures at home which I’m looking forward to showing soon enough. Like a good bottle of wine, you want to lay it down for a little while so then it seems nice and fresh, something a little bit different.

John Bellany, Raised Beach, etching, 39.5cm x 45.5cm

So what we find at Fidra has been shaped a lot by some practical considerations, the push and the pull. But I also wonder, is what you're doing at Fidra influenced by the tastes of your clientele or by the East Lothian scene? First of all, did you inherit a clientele, because the premises you occupy on Main Street was once occupied by Gullane Art Gallery?

No, I didn't. I quite deliberately didn't. I could have bought the mailing list and the name Gullane Art Gallery but I didn’t have any interest in that. I had my own artists that I wanted to show. Every art gallery is a reflection of the personality of the art dealer who’s doing the work. It's their personality, it's their taste. And I want the gallery to be a gallery, not a shop. I want people to come and see it and not to feel that they have to buy something. I want them to come and learn. That's why I try to put on small group shows, and if it's on a theme like “figurative” or whatever, I want to show some pictures that are really abstracted, some that are really tight, some that are representational, but all of them by really good artists. I’ve been incredibly lucky to be able to choose the artists who I think are some of the best ones working in Scotland today. So I hope people come and see and learn what it is they like. I think you have to see a lot of stuff before you get that bug that you and I both have. Why do I quite like that abstract? It’s just a couple of blocks of colour. Why do I like that?! You've got to give yourself time to look at these things. I don't want people to think that every time they come into a gallery they have to buy something. That’s just a perception that people have. It's not a shop, it's a gallery, and you go to a gallery to look at art.

You’re fortunate to be in a position to inform people’s tastes.

I think that when people come in and they say they don't know anything about art, that’s not right. If you ask them to pick a piece, they would pick a piece that they liked. So they will like something, they’ve just got to give themselves time to think about it and think about why they like it. Just ask that question.

Simon Laurie, Mary Stuart, acrylic on board, 51cm x 46cm

As you say, everyone’s different and presumably you do get a lot of different people visiting Fidra. Or is there such a thing as an average client?

It’s very different. You get people who are just down in Gullane for the day, even to get out the rain. You get people who collect, people who live locally and do want a painting. There’s a whole variety. People say Gullane’s a wealthy town, which generally it is, but it’s made up of a lot of different sectors, like new-builds. It’s the same with East Lothian. The pie that makes up my client list or the people who buy from me ranges from people who spend ten grand on a picture without blinking to people for whom a £1,000 painting is a really big, considered purchase. Just now, with the cost of living crisis, I think this is the section that has been hit most. People who might buy a £1500 picture once a year, they’re probably thinking twice about that now, whereas someone who's got a load of money or is a collector, they'll make sure they’ve got the money for it. A collector will figure out a way of doing it. It's that big variety of people that makes it very interesting, but I think at the moment with the way the economy is, there are big chunks of it that have been hit quite a bit.

To what extent do you feel installed here in East Lothian? Fidra has a good online presence and as you say you get a lot of visiting tourists. Do you find yourself catering a lot to the rest of the UK and to Europe?

Yes, but to Europe, less so now. The demand wasn't massive before Brexit - I would say I’d sell maybe ten or 12 pieces every year. Now since Brexit, I can't remember the last one I sent to Europe. I might send one in a year. That's really affected things. You do get quite a lot going down South and to London. But there are a lot of customers in East Lothian and there's a really good set of artists here, particularly down in North Berwick. There’s Astrid Trügg, Jayne Stokes, Angela Repping, Georgina Bown, Rachel Marshall, George Birrell, Alan Connell, to name a few. They have been very supportive of me and the gallery. There’s a really strong art scene and they're all quite good friends, so when we had the gallery in the house we used to have openings and they would be just great. It was like having a great big piss-up in your house on a Friday night every month! It was often rammed. It was a really good social for the artists, whether they’re in the show or not, because they can come down, blether about art, and meet any new artists in the area. It's good for ideas. I want to encourage that. Providing a load of wine and nibbles is no big deal in the grand scheme of things. The Friday nights used to be really busy and if you came to look at the pictures it was probably not very easy to see them, so now we open the show at 11 on a Saturday morning so anyone who wants to see and buy a picture can get in early. Then from two till five in the afternoon, you can come along and have a glass of wine and a blether to the artist. It's all quite good. And for people who have to travel, everything’s that bit easier on a Saturday afternoon.

As a collector-cum-dealer, perhaps you find yourself in an interesting predicament. If there’s an artist you’re especially excited about, how do you engage with them? Do you want to buy something for your own collection? Or does the gallerist in you have to restrain that selfish collecting impulse? Do you have two different brains at work?

It’s interesting you say that. You do buy things and you think “I don’t want to move that on”. Even if you flip it… Say you’ve bought something for £1500 and move it on quickly, you sometimes think, “I don't really want to lose that picture to make a few hundred quid for the business”. There are things I’ve had like a very good Ian Fleming of Sandend, which I sold to a good customer not too long ago. They love Ian Fleming, so it’s great it’s gone to someone who will appreciate it, but there's a part of me that went with it. But that's just the way it goes.

Ian Fleming, Seagulls at Sandend, watercolour on paper, 63.5cm x 47cm

Is Ian Fleming an artist who’s very much on your radar at the moment? Someone you're excited by?

He's always been someone I’ve been interested in. We spoke earlier, off tape, about how the prices for his work have shot up recently, and I think he’s a brilliant artist, a really good Scottish artist, who people should know more about. James McBey is another one. Fortunately, Alasdair Soussi brought out his book a little while ago and he’s done a great job of promoting James McBey. Newburgh have got signs for him now. These guys are unsung heroes I think, and I think they should be far more well known. There's an autobiography about the first half of McBey’s life which is really worth reading. Particularly if you’re a historian, but it’s really colourful. A great artist. I've always been interested in James Cumming, Neil Dallas Brown, John Bulloch Soutar. Soutar’s a bit of an obsession of mine. Again, another really good Scottish artist. The drawings are just immaculate, so well draughted. It’s a pleasure to learn a bit more about the artist, about his history. I've got a couple of drawings of the bridges in Toledo, just outside Madrid, and we went over there last year. I had taken photos of the drawings and I wanted to go across and find the bridges. I’d thought both drawings were of the same bridge, but as it turns out, they’re different bridges altogether. We were driving past it… “Hang on a minute!” It was a massive eureka moment. We had to stop and take photos. Then you come back and compare the photo to what the scene was like in 1926, there’s crumbling walls of scaffolding up, towers and things, and it just takes you right back in time. Beautifully, beautifully drawn. Another brilliant artist that hardly anyone knows about. I’ve got a few of his etchings. I'd like to write a book about him, perhaps put on a solo show, but as with drawings by Neil Dallas Brown I have here in the gallery, it can cost a fortune to get the things framed, and then sadly you might not sell any of them.

John Bulloch Soutar, Model Resting, etching, 17cm x 14cm

I’m also excited by contemporaries like Dominique Cameron. She's had several solo shows here. She always works to a project, so she'll work for two years, then we’ll do the show. I've got complete trust in what she does. She really pushes herself. Some of her work might be quite representational earlier on but it's still quite sketchy. Very loose. She does a lot of writing that looks very good that goes with it. Gradually, as we've done the shows, there’s been more abstraction coming in, until the last one we did was really quite abstracted. That was brilliant. She’s got a following now and she’s taken people with her, along that abstract route, which I think is great. I never liked abstract work, 20 years ago. But gradually… I’ve just been to the Rothko show in Paris, which features some of his earlier work, figurative and surrealist stuff to abstracted colour forms, and eventually the colour fields which he was so well-known for. He continued to change. As a collector or as someone who looks at art, your tastes change as well. I think Andy Heald’s stuff is getting more abstracted as he goes along and then similarly, with Dominique, she’s paring things back. I find I'm interested. One of the big parts of this job that I like is education. Everyday, you're learning something else about the art world.

Dominique Cameron, The Artist, mixed media on plywood, 60cm x 70cm

And it’s interesting to note that people who are showing here might be responding to one another and developing along similar lines. Fidra is a hub for the artists?

Exactly. Dominique came in to see the show on Sunday and Andy came in to meet her, because Andy’s bought a couple of Dominique's pictures and Dominique's watched Andy's work develop over the past ten years or so. It’s really good. I want to encourage that kind of community, that kind of experience. I want to get people to experience different types of art and share it. I want to get people to learn. I want to get people educated about the art world. I don't want to sound pompous, as if it seems like I know more. I don’t! That's why I'm doing this. I'm interested and I'm learning. And I’ve certainly got an imposter syndrome, as if I’m going to get found out! I like doing it and I’m privileged to be able to do it. Going out for beers with the artists, going down to London and visiting exhibitions with them, you’re talking about their work and their influences… It's brilliant, it's magic, it's what it's all about. It's absolutely not just about selling. I don't make any money. Definitely not. Your fees are 45%, which sounds to anyone a lot to take away from the artist, which it is, but I'm not getting rich. Maybe other places do. Maybe there aren’t enough chimney pots in East Lothian to warrant a gallery like that, but it is what it is. I’m not moving to Glasgow or Edinburgh.

Going back to the pictures for a moment, can we speak about the ones that got away? Are there any pictures that have slipped through your fingers, or any that you regret selling? It might be a cast of thousands…

There are quite a few. Right back at the beginning, I sold an Earl Haig of the Eildons – “Eildons and Horses”. I saw one recently, it must have been a study, at Lyon and Turnbull. I think it came in from his estate or something. It was a smaller one but it was a similar composition. An oil of three horses on a hill with the Eildons in the background, quite abstracted. And it was fantastic! I sold mine to a friend in North Berwick, who’s still got it, and I really wish I hadn't sold it. I'm sure if it was in the Scottish Gallery now it would sell for a lot more. Speaking of selling, I do get people coming in, offering pictures to me, but I find it really difficult to know what to offer them. If I buy something, I need to be able to make a profit on it, more or less double up, depending on what it is. But I don’t want to buy something for £500 and then the next day, I put it in the window at £1000 and they walk by. You have to be up front with people and say “I've got to make a living out of this”. I've not done as much of that sort of buying as I probably should do, or would like to do, or I imagined I would do, because of that reluctance. I want people to get a good deal but it's difficult to get a good deal when I also have to get a decent deal! And not end up stuck with a room full of pictures that I have to put into auction and which I might make a loss on.

Earl Haig, Horses and Eildons, oil on canvas, 77cm x 101cm

It occurs to me that this is one of the main problems you face running a gallery in this day and age. The cost of living crisis aside, auction houses have such a strong online presence and they attract normal folk, as opposed to just committed collectors or the trade.

It's definitely changed. When Jim Carruthers at St Andrews Fine Art used to do it, he’d put the miles in and make contact with auction houses all over the country. They would call him if a Scottish piece came up that he might be interested in. Things that he had in the gallery, he would turn over quite quickly, so if it didn't sell at an exhibition, he would put quite a lot back into auctions. I'm sure when Jim stopped putting things into auction houses, that would be a sad day for them. But he would take things to London which might do better in the London market, or Brighton maybe. This is before the internet really took off. I wish I had started the gallery way back then. Jim said to me when I was opening the gallery, “I’m glad I’m getting out, I wouldn't want to be starting now”. He was lucky to have a personal connection with these guys. He had a network, but now everything’s online, which makes things incredibly easy, but of course it makes it easy for everyone, so there are fewer bargains.

It’s a long time since the heyday of Jim Carruthers and co, and things have changed significantly throughout Fidra’s lifetime. But despite the challenges, you’re still excited by your work?

Yes. It's difficult with the cost of living crisis and also, I just want more people to come in. I want to put on shows that aren't mainstream and still get people to come along. I want them to buy, of course, but more importantly, I want them to see the work. It’s a question of certain artists painting what they need to paint, as opposed to being commercial. So what are the expectations of these artists, I want to know? With some artists, I’d like to give them a bigger presence in the gallery, perhaps half the gallery, but I know I wouldn't be able to sell anything, so I feel guilty when I return everything to the artist at the end of the run. But I still think they should be shown. I want people to see their work. It’s difficult. I want to do more of that. I will do, I definitely will. I’ve got my eyes on a few.

Neil Dallas Brown, Ripple Swell - Green Place, pencil on paper, 15cm x 17.5cm

To the person in the street, even to the art lover, private galleries come with a reputation. At worst, they can seem like a closed-shop. It’s so refreshing to hear that this has been a very organic sort of journey for you. The gallery isn’t built on untold riches or the support of powerful friends. It’s a passion project. You’ve followed a path without really knowing where you’re going and it’s all come to fruition. And as you say, it’s all still developing.

It’s about going with the flow. If I can give any encouragement to anyone starting a business, and it doesn't matter if it's a gallery or not – I’d say, just do it. Nobody’s going to shoot you if it doesn’t work out. I mean, I was lucky. I’d paid off the mortgage when we moved into the new house, and my wife’s still working, and the kids are moving off to uni. We could just about afford it. It still needs to make money, there’s no doubt about that. So there was risk, but there was a sense, at the time, when I thought “if it doesn't work, then I'll go back to what I was doing before”. But I can't do it now. I’m too far away from that business. After two or three years you do feel a bit exposed, as if there's no going back. But I’ve never wanted to go back.

Long may that exposure continue. Alan Rae is not one for going back. From rather humble origins, Fidra has grown from strength to strength under his steady enthusiasm. The hand it extends to the art community and the public alike is evidence of a hard-wired passion for art. We can only hope that it continues to guide Fidra over many years to come.

Fidra Fine Art can be found at 7-8 Stanley Road (Main Street), Gullane, EH31 2AD.

The gallery is open from 11am to 4pm from Tuesday to Saturday. It’s open from 12pm to 4pm on Sundays. It’s closed on Mondays.

Fidra’s current exhibition, Land and Sea, featuring work by Kirstie Behrens, Andy Heald and John McClenaghen, is open until 3rd March. The following exhibition, 5 @ Fidra, featuring work by Rosemary Beaton, June Carey, Alice McMurrough, Heather Nevay and Helen Wilson, runs from 9th March to 21st April.

Banner image: Alan Connell, Sea Watchers, gouache on paper, 21cm x 10cm

www.fidrafineart.co.uk

With thanks to Alan Rae. All images courtesy of Fidra Fine Art.