YOU may not know it but there is a bitter battle being waged ... and it all because of your living room wall. A handful of Scottish commercial artists have come to dominate the domestic art market - typified by the paintings and prints we hang above the fire place. The battleground isn't in trendy and rarefied galleries - it's in shopping malls, high street chains and online. And the weapons are limited edition prints, affordable originals, reproductions that are hand embellished to look more like an original, even the odd printed mug or cushion. Some sneer at it, some call it populist. Whatever its name, this is the art that is being hung again and again in our homes – images of Highland Cows, Scottie and Westie dogs, icons of Scottishness, vibrantly coloured landscapes, nostalgic figure paintings, and yes, the perennially popular images created by Jack Vettriano. For his much-reproduced The Singing Butler is the epitome of populist art.

John Thomson is a man who knows plenty about the Scottish art war - he's the Managing Director of The Gallery, a commercial art shop which has stores in The Gyle in Edinburgh, and Buchanan Galleries and Silverburn in Glasgow. Originally he ran a furniture shop, then, when he realised that people were more interested in the painting hung on the wall behind the chair than the chair itself, he switched to prints. “It was a nicer business. Furniture is a crowded market.”

The art in these galleries sometimes calls to mind a quote by one of Scotland’s popular artists, Steven Brown. “Art for me,” he said, “is a way of taking away the doom and gloom of everyday life. Art is something you can put in your house that makes you feel happy. It shows where you’re from.”

Often critics and cognoscenti are dismissive of populist art. But art critic Catriona Black confesses that she often likes "easy" art. As Black observes, populist art is often not defined by the art itself but how it’s sold, by “marketing savvy and a good head for business".

“That’s not new,” she says. “Look at Rubens, who really knew how to work the European market, combining his role as painter - and head of a big studio business - with that of diplomat. He set up a printmaking studio with its own staff in Antwerp, to make engravings of his paintings to market his work to a wider European audience.”

Often, she observes, there is an element of social positioning in what art, or type of gallery, people prefer. “There's a lot of snobbery in both directions - people unwilling to be seen liking "high" art or "low" art depending on where they see themselves socially.”

Steven Brown

You may not know it but you saw Steven Brown's work a lot over Christmas - as the Scottish artist was able to buy up primetime advertising slots on TV. In June last year, people who shared, liked or commented on artist Steven Brown’s Facebook page, could win a car painted to look like his iconic McCoo pictures. It’s this kind of marketing ploy that has rapidly made Brown’s work one of the most recognisable brands in Scottish populist art today. Look, at any time, on Steven Brown’s website and Facebook page and you’ll find a series of deals. Big 30% off promotions. Print sales. Short videos in which Brown presents his paintings, cushions and other merchandise with the enthusiasm of a gallus car salesman.

But all that probably wouldn’t work if he wasn’t for the Highland Cow images he creates. The limited edition print market is, curiously enough, dominated by these hairy icons of Scottishness. Their shaggy faces are churned out, in various forms by many different artists, almost as if they were a design classic. Go to an art shop like The Gallery in The Gyle and the beast is everywhere, in almost every artist's range sold. Yet Brown, with his McCoo has somehow managed to make the Coo his own.

In an age of image overload, Brown has managed to stand out, and partly because of the way he has marketed not only his art, but himself and his story, selling through his own website and shop. Up until seven years ago, Brown was working full-time as a manager in a fast food restaurant, then he had a sudden heart attack, had to take time off to recuperate, and started painting. Brown painted his first McCoo in 2015. A friend of his had admired his colourful style and asked if he could paint a Highland Cow for her home. “When I gave it to her,” he says, “she cried.”

Some 462,000 people follow him on Facebook. Since he started painting in 2010, he has sold around 550 original paintings and 35,000 limited edition prints. Mostly, in other words, it's prints he's selling. “Facebook,” says Brown, “is really important for us.” It’s a marketing style that only serves to make him seem all the more unpretentious. “I’m not your traditional artist,” he says. “I’m just an ordinary guy from Kilmarnock and people relate to where I’ve come from and the incredible journey that I’ve been on. Social media has meant that I connect to people all over the UK, and beyond.”

Georgina McMaster

There was a time when wildlife artist Georgina McMaster was best known for her Highland Cows, lush, sensual images like Fee Fi Fo Fum, in which four shaggy faces peer out from a white background. “The Highland Cow was such a big thing for me,” she says. “But it’s so overdone now. So many other artists are doing that now and I feel like I’m quite lucky that I’m not necessarily known for that now. It sounds terrible but I love to paint what I want to paint.” McMaster, who is also known for her paintings of other wildlife - giraffes from Africa, tigers from India, bees from her back garden - first started to see her career take off when she won, in 2007 the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons Award, and in 2008 the David Cargill Award. “I’ve been doing a lot of bees,” says McMaster who lives in Aberdeenshire, “because bees are on the decline and I wanted to draw attention to the importance of that.”

Jack Vettriano

Think of populist art and one image, above all, comes to mind – that of The Singing Butler. It’s the Vettriano that was once rejected by the Royal Scottish Academy Summer Exhibition, but went on, in 2004 to be sold at auction for £744,800. The bid was astonishing, a record for a Scottish painting, and the much-reproduced image remains hugely popular. When, a couple of years ago, Samsung did a poll of the nation’s favourite artworks The Singing Butler came third, beaten, in first place, by Banksy’s Balloon Girl, followed by Constable’s The Haywain.

At The Gallery's shops in Edinburgh and Glasgow, this is not actually the most frequently purchased Vettriano print. Customers, says their buyer, Pamela Donnelly, are more likely to request Dance Me To The End Of Love. “We can get any of his work, but you find it’s the same pictures people want again and again.”

Stuart Mcalpine Miller

At Castle Fine Art on Multrees Walk, Edinburgh, manager Adele Cross is keen to talk about what she describes as one of the most exciting Scottish artists of the moment – Stuart McAlpine Miller. The gallery she works in, one in a chain of 37 which are the marketing wing of a limited edition print publisher, sells originals as well as prints, and last week she sold one of McAlpine Miller’s originals for a considerable five figure sum. “He is genuinely doing something new,” she says. Mcalpine Miller’s star has been on the rise for some time, particularly since, in 2012 he was artist in residence at the Savoy Hotel. His paintings recently dominated the opening exhibition of the new Castle gallery opposite GOMA in Glasgow. And he is only set to gain more popularity, since, recently, he completed Harry Potter works for Warner Brothers.

But McAlpine Miller’s isn’t exactly what you might call “easy” work. Yes, some of the images worked into his multi-layered paintings – comic book art and pop iconography – give it an instant popular appeal, but its messages are more complex. McAlpine Miller himself says that the work we see now is the result of a “development process” that has taken place over 27 years, which came together when he saw how social networking and the internet were changing the way we live. His art, he says, is "social comment", adding: “They’re designed to be something that everyone can recognise based upon living now. They’re a direct response to everything around.”

McAlpine Miller’s relationship to his success and popularity however isn’t straightforward. Signing up with Castle Galleries wasn’t an easy choice for him at the time he did it. “I fought against it for quite a long time because I didn’t want to become part of a big group. I was keen to maintain my independence. But, in hindsight, I think the platform they gave me has been nothing less than incredible – for my work to be seen by an enormous spectrum of people, a huge audience.”

Jolomo

John Lowrie Morrison still spends 60 hours a week in his studio painting. He calls this, at 69 years old, slowing down, since he no longer works on Saturdays. Jolomo, as he is more commonly known, is a phenomenon, his vivid expressionistic landscapes much loved by many, his works produced at an astounding rate – at one point, he was reported to be painting 100 works a month. One of his paintings is even said to be owned by the Queen. What is it about his art that he thinks makes it so popular? He’s reluctant to analyse. “Art is something which is from your spirit, I think,” he says. “And your spirit talks.”

“I think it’s the colour,” he adds, at one point. “The colour speaks to people.”

For much of his life he taught, and worked in education, but then at 48 years old he took job severance and launched himself into full-time painting. He never looked back. Like all popular artists, he is not without his critics. One journalist described his work as the “visual equivalent of easy listening”. But his vibrant work is an enduring and captivating draw.

“What I do may look easy,” he says, “but it takes decades of work to get to that. People sometimes say, ‘I’ll do that. It’s easy.’ It’s not easy. They get a fright when they try.”

One of his chief current concerns is copyists who make a living out of paintings which ape his style. “I see these people pinching what I do, the colours I do. It’s got out of hand with the copyists. Everyone and their granny is copying.”