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Catalogue available
I was taught to draw and paint at the Ruskin Schools in Oxford during the
late seventies when it was still fashionable, just, to teach the traditions
of perspective, composition and colour theory. There were also tutors teaching
time based ideas and I realise in retrospect that I was on the cusp of a
big revolution in the way we think about and make art. Through the eighties
and nineties I was often dismayed to pick up yet another article that proclaimed
that painting was dead, but it has often been the way that each new artistic
movement dismisses what went before in its attempt to establish a new order;
it’s a relief to see that painting is once again back on the agenda.
It has always been significant and meaningful from the cave paintings at
Lascaux right through to the present day; more recently contempory practices
like photography and digital media have both liberated and reinvigorated
the medium. I am happy that I have this new technology in my toolbox just
as I am glad that the understanding of perspective, composition and colour
are so deeply ingrained that when working I barely have to worry about them.
Initially considering landscape one tends to think of something extensive
and solid, the sheer mass and bulk of the mountains, the length and breadth
of straths and glens, the rocks and plants, even the myriad of small details
within them, all have physical substance. But often it is that shaft of light
on a distant hill, the shimmer of reflections across water or the wind brushing
the long grasses like an animal’s fur that enlivens the scene. At various
times of day and at certain times of year the Highland landscape glows with
light almost as if it is illuminated from within, to capture this is to grasp
the kinetic energy that resonates through the landscape. When the skeletal
structure has been caught the air within it can be animated, the moving wind
is like breath that brings life to the body and the water that flows through
it, across it, falls on it from the sky and fills the lochs and rivers is
the life blood that nourishes all.
To put movement in a painting that is a fixed, static object would seem to
be a contradiction, but those tutors who taught us time based ideas at the
Ruskin had some helpful suggestions. Life drawing classes were not about
a model holding a single pose all day, we were asked to draw Indian dancers
who whirled around the room to discordant music, we learned about negative
space, how the things that you didn’t draw were as important as those
you did and how a vacuum can suggest the presence of something that has recently
moved. Primary colour theory teaches that complimentary colours in close
proximity vibrate with each other, just as tonal colour recession can help
with the illusion of depth so a secondary and primary colour placed together
will flicker and draw our gaze from one part of a picture to another.
It has always been part of my working practise to include chance in the painting
process, striving to find new ways of applying paint, creating surface and
texture and developing techniques is challenging and stimulating, (and often
good fun!); mark making discovered in this experimental way can be refined
and incorporated into a constantly evolving language that I use alongside
the careful observation and recording of Nature championed by John Ruskin
in his own work. Sometimes to get at what you want it is necessary to approach
it obliquely, I found that I could paint the less tangible elements, the
water, the wind and the light and so suggest the permanence of an ancient
land constantly crossed with changing weather. The wind is seldom quiet here
and as it batters against the land it alters the outlines of trees and shorelines;
often it carries water with it distorting distance, covering or revealing
first one hillside then another, the light glows through it sparkling from
the wet rocks and lochans that reflect the ever-moving sky. Paint can be
about many things and the way that it describes them, an abstract mark can
become representational through its context within the larger picture, or
it can stand alone as a beautiful detail. It can become the rushing water
of a river in spate, a cumulus cloud blown across a stormy sky, a tower of
ice and rock or a vertiginous space ready for the unwary to tumble in to.
That’s what I love about it and all its endless surprises, that magic,
because in the end it is only paint, pigment squeezed from a tube that with
a little imagination can represent anything in the world.
James Hawkins February 2007
Biography
1954
Born in Reading
Wimbledon School of Art, London 1972-73
W.S.C.D. Worthing 1974-75
Ruskin School of Drawing, Oxford 1975-78
Moved to Ullapool, Northwest Highlands of Scotland 1978
Group Exhibitions
Balliol College, Oxford 1975
369 Gallery, Edinburgh 1978
Nevil Gallery, Bath 1980
Wilderness Conference, Findhorn Community, Forres 1983
Compass Gallery, Glasgow 1984
MacLean Biennial, Greenock 1996
'Seven Artists' View of Iona', 369 Gallery, Edinburgh 1987
'Light and Space', Crawford Arts Centre, St. Andrews 1988
10th Anniversary Exhibition, 369 Gallery, Edinburgh 1988
'Artravaganza', Smith Gallery, Stirling 1988
'Scottish Landscape', 369 Gallery, Edinburgh 1989
'Into the Highlands', MacManus Gallery, Dundee 1989
'Mountain Experience', Highland Region Touring Exhibition 1991
'The Beltane Spirit', Highland Council Touring Exhibition 1995
Gulbenkian Foundation, 'Prints for the Western Isles' 1995
ART '96, London Contemporary Art Fair 1996
Art in the square, Glasgow Art Fair 1996
'Heartlands', 20th Century Scottish Landscapes, Edinburgh
1996
ART '97, London Contemporary Art Fair 1997
Kilmorack gallery, Beauly 1997
LINEART '97, International Art Fair, Ghent 1997
Davies & Tooth, London 1998
ART '98, London Contemporary Art Fair 1998
Glasgow Art Fair 1998
ART '99, London Contemporary Art Fair 1999
Glasgow Art Fair 1999
ART 2000, London Contemporary Art Fair 2000
"Living the Land" Duff House, Banff 2001
Art '02 London Contemporary Art fair 2002
Solo Exhibitions
Eden Court, Inverness 1983
MacLean Art Gallery, Greenock 1986
Eden Court, Inverness 1987
'Landmarks', 369 Gallery, Edinburgh 1988
'Secret Places and Intimate Landscapes', Torrance Gallery, Edinburgh 1989
Galerie Van Alom, Berlin 1990
Gallery 202, London 1990
Tolquhon Gallery, Aberdeen 1991
'Sense of Place', 369 Gallery, Edinburgh 1992
'Sacred Sights', C. Boyd Gallery, Galashiels 1993
Coventry Gallery, London 1996
Duncan R. Miller Fine Arts, Glasgow 1997
'Inferences', Bellevue Gallery, Edinburgh 1998
Kilmorack Gallery, Beauly 1998
A Journey in all Weathers, Davies & Tooth, London 1999
"Landscape, Colour and Light" Davies and Tooth, London 2001
Kilmorack Gallery, Beauly 2002
"Art on the Links" St Andrews 2002
"Way out West" Davies and Tooth, London 2003
Stage Design
'Biston Betularia', Video 1986
'The Brahan Seer', Eden Court Theatre, Inverness 1986
Awards and Commissions
Painting Prize, Ruskin Art School 1976
'Painter of the Year', Warwick Arts Trust, London 1989
Glenfiddich Distillery Scottish Art 1998
"Highland Festival " "Elements" " Animation Collaboration" 2001
Collections
Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow
Edinburgh City Council
Warwick Arts Trust
Highland Regional Council
Ross and Cromarty District Council
Royal Bank of Scotland
Wilde Sapte, London, Brussels, Paris
'Paintings in Hospitals', Scotland
Highland Regional Council
Buchanan Ingersoll, London
