John Bellany is revealed as a seeker in search of himself in this first major overview of the Port Seton-born artist’s work since his death in 2013. You can see it in the early 1960s drawing of the wild-haired roaring boy of the new Edinburgh art scene as he stares through the frame, flint-eyed and goatee-bearded. You can see it too in the more resigned figure of ‘Bellany At 70’ (2012), all dressed up for the occasion, eyes softer now.

In between, more than 80 works see Bellany embark on an unflinching personal odyssey. From the living hell of his 1969 ‘Homage To John Knox’ triptych, and the disembodied head of his etching, ‘Angry Young Man’ (1971), some of Bellany’s later 1970s works feature him surrounded by monkeys, fish and other creatures. Bellany seems conscious of his own mortality from early on. The deathly pallor of 1969’s ‘Skull Self Portrait’ is mirrored in the face full of medical tubes from 1986, and later in a hospital self-portrait from his 2007 sketchbook. By the time of 2012’s ‘Self Portrait In Chair’, the demons seem to have been purged as the painting bookends a vital and essential glimpse into a world where art and life are laid bare in equal measure. 

John Bellany: A Life In Self-Portraiture, City Art Centre, until Sunday 28 September.