Finger of a Frenchman explores looking, and writing about looking: looking at surfaces and beyond them, at what is depicted and what is hidden in shadow, at how a transient chemistry of light may be fixed in colour and words.

Celebrating five centuries of the artistic bond between Scotland and France, these poems are portraits of artists and reflections on art. In this work, Jean-Jacques Rousseau irritates his portrait painter Allan Ramsay; John Acheson, Master of the Scottish Mint, takes Mary, Queen of Scots' portrait for the Scottish coinage; and Esther Inglis paints the first self-portrait by a Scottish artist. A reflection on the nature of a "collection," this analytic consideration not only features paintings hanging in Scotland's major galleries but also explores the rapport between art and poetry.