Not many hotels in Scotland can boast of having an artist in residence but that’s the claim of the Great Western Hotel in Aberdeen’s west end, writes Bill Harris.
The artist in question is 55 year old art teacher Barry Watt who, over the last 20 years, has created a unique pictorial history of the hotel’s customers and staff.
In the last two decades his collection of caricatures and cartoons of regulars and bar staff, past and present, has grown from just two or three to close to two hundred.
Each Christmas the collection is dusted down and brought from storage to adorn the walls of the Great Western’s Clubhouse Bar.
Watt, who teaches art at Aberdeen’s Northfield Academy, said: “People have a good laugh looking up and recognising people they knew and had good times with. Probably some they had forgotten about! It just adds a nice Christmas feel to the place.
“It’s like old friends visiting again.”
