Lime Hawkmoth - from A Whistling of Birds collaboration with Isobel Dixon.
Evangelistic Beasts - Eagle, from A Whistling of Birds collaboration with Isobel Dixon
Roving Mics - from a 'Whistling of Birds' with Isobel Dixon
Lo Scoiattolo - from a 'Whistling of Birds' with Isobel Dixon
Bede's Sparrow - from a 'Whistling of Birds' with Isobel Dixon
New Posts Coming Soon.
After a long break from working, watch the blog for new posts. New work and exhibition news coming soon on The Net Mender.
'Il Porcellino' and 'My Sweet Fiorenza' featured in The Florentine - from 'A Whistling of Birds' with Isobel Dixon
Il Porcellino - from a 'Whistling of Birds' with Isobel Dixon
Il Porcellino - pencil on paper
Fantastic to have Isobel’s beautiful poem, ‘My Sweet Fiorenza’ and my drawing of Il Porcellino included in the latest edition of The Florentine, an english language magazine produced in Florence.
Click on this link to purchase a paper copy or download a PDF version.
'In Search of a New World' Exhibition Award
Very pleased to announce that my assemblage piece, ‘Emigrants - Wake’, has been awarded the second place prize at the Southhampton City Art Gallery Biennial Open Exhibition, ‘In Search of a New World’.
It is such an honour to receive this award, which was completely unexpected. After working as an artist for the last thirty-two years, this is my first award for my work and I am very pleased to receive the recognition.
‘This work fully embodies the themes of Journey, Migration and The Sea. The interplay between the painted surface and the relief make this a visually captivating piece.
The use of the word ‘wake’ to contemplate not only the wake of the boat in the water but the wake of its journey, the individuals on-board and the dangerous nature of the voyage is thought provoking and moving.’
Judges Comments
You can view this work, and the other superb pieces in the exhibition by clicking on this link.
Emigrants - Wake Carved and painted wood on board
Imaginary Travels - Journeys in Lockdown 1
Hut of Shadows, Lochmaddy, North Uist
After four months of lockdown things are just starting to get moving again. As an artist, it has been particularly difficult not being able to travel to experience culture, landscapes and to research the subject matter needed to develop new works.
To try to help with this, I’m going to take a look back into the sketchbooks and create a series of virtual journeys to some of the places that have had a significant affect on my work as an artist.
For the first one, I’ve been looking back to a recent trip I made to the Hebridean islands of North and South Uist, and Benbecula. I have spent the last twenty-five years traveling around the Scottish islands, and I am still as excited planning a new visit as I was my first time.
This trip tied in with an exhibition of the drawings and poems from Birdfall, my collaboration with my friend Donald S Murray, and our talk as part of the Uist Book Festival and Scottish Book Week.
St Kilda Viewpoint, North Uist
One advantage to the traveller visiting the Uists is that you can travel between four islands, North Uist, Grimsay, Benbecula and South Uist by a series of wonderful causeways.
As an artist, the Scottish islands are a wealth of fantastic material and ideas to get the imagination and sketchbooks working, and the Uists do not disappoint. From superb land and seascapes, to incredible wildlife experiences, there is so much to sketch and photograph and take back to the studio.
One evening walk, north along the road from Clachan, on the west side of North Uist produced some fantastic views of the island’s spectacular raptors. The first encounter was with a pair of Golden Eagles, seen first perched on top of a small hill creating a pair of strange silhouettes on the skyline. It wasn’t until they took to the air that the effect of their presences was really witnessed. As the flew over the machair, thousands of other birds took to the air in alarm. From geese and ducks to waders and other seabirds, the sky was filled with the worried calls of the resident population, while the eagles flew along languidly as if they too were just out for an evening stroll, oblivious to the chaos ensuing all around them!
Further up the road, it was the behaviour and alarm calls of Redshanks and Lapwings that alerted me to the presence of another bird of prey (there are no foxes on the islands, so alarms usually mean a passing raptor). Scanning the hillside to see what was causing the commotion, I came across an adult White-tailed Eagle, perched on top of a rock and paying no attention to the attentions for the divebombing waders, now joined by Oystercatchers.
On the return journey, I saw what is one of my favourite birds of prey, and a real speciality of the islands, the Hen Harrier. The first was a female, or Ringtail, flying over the machair towards the hills, followed closely by the beautiful grey male quartering slowly over the fields and shore edges. Interesting to observe that these fairly large birds of prey caused very little disturbance to the local bird population, being mobbed only by Meadow Pipits, Twites and Wheatears.
Sitting here in the isolation of the studio, I can look over the sketchbooks and notes from the trips, with fantastic visual memories of our wonderful islands.
In Search of a New World - Southampton City Art Gallery Open Exhibition 2020
Southampton City Art Gallery will still host its 2020 biennial Open Exhibition ‘In Search of a New World’, now in a new digital format to ensure the exhibition goes ahead despite the uncertainties of reopening the gallery, and so all potential visitors can still engage and explore the art while remaining safe at home
For the Open Exhibition, artists were invited to respond to the themes of journey, migration and the sea in any way. These themes are the heart of our Mayflower 400 programme, encouraging communities and our cultural leaders to creatively explore Southampton’s unique position as Gateway to the World.
I am pleased to say that three of my assemblage pieces have been chosen as part of the virtual exhibition as part of the Mayflower celebrations.
The theme of this exhibition has run through much of my work for the last twenty-five years, and it was wonderful to be given the opportunity to show these work, albeit virtually, here in my home on the south coast. Migration and emigration has been a shared theme throughout many cultures, and I am pleased to share my vision of the story of emigration for many people from Scotland who set sail for the New World.
Watch out for the link to the exhibition on The Net Mender, which goes live on the 15th of August.
Emigrants - Departure
'Les Animots - A Human Bestiary' website now online.
Screenshot of the ‘Les Animots - A Human Bestiary’ website.
Hope you can take some time to browse through the website for the book collaboration, Les Animots - A Human Bestiary’, with my friend and poet Gordon Meade.
The website contains the four galleries of images and poems, plus reviews and more information on Gordon’s excellent poetry. Click on the title link above to view the galleries, or access through the main menu of the website.
'This remarkable collaboration between seasoned poet and artist is a considerable achievement and a joy to read.'
Norman Bissell, poet and director of the
Scottish Centre for Geopoetics
'There is a lot of wisdom in this book, often masked in gentle absurdity or wry observation. A coming together of two mature talents'.
Christine De Luca, Edinburgh Makar and
Shetland poet
'I’m always intrigued when artists cross genre boundaries to collaborate with one another in order to create a fusion of meaning. You won’t find another book quite like this one'.
Brian Turner, author of My Life as a
Foreign Country and Here, Bullet
Hare - from 'A Whistling of Birds' with Isobel Dixon
Douglas Robertson at the Wild Art Gallery
I am pleased to announce that a selection of my drawings will be exhibited and for sale at the Wild Art Gallery in Wickham, Hampshire.
I have also created an online shopping link to the gallery on my website, where there will be regular updates of new works for sale. This is a new venture for me, all part of the ‘new normal’, and will possibly lead to other online exhibiting opportunities.
Follow the menu bar on my website to the Shop Online button, and follow the link to the gallery shop.
Seahorse - from 'A Whistling of Birds' with Isobel Dixon
A Peek In The Sketchbooks - Seascapes
I’m currently working on a series of sea sketches which will, hopefully, form part of the backgrounds for a sequence of assemblages I am creating to celebrate the 140th anniversary of the Fishermen’s Mission charity.
It has been a while since I worked on any sea themed works, but as with anything that is in your blood, it’s been easy to get my head and imagination back on to the subject. Working on a sketchbook of seascapes and coastal images helps me get into the correct mind set for the project, and I’m drawing from the many years of sketchbook notes I have in my studio (incredibly, some dating back to 1988!) and working with the best forms to suit the themes.
As the project continues, I’ll post more sketchbook notes and work in progress images, giving a taste of what is to come in the 2021 Fishermen’s Mission celebrations.
Birds, Beasts and Flowers - On isobeldixon.com
Great to have a link to the Birds, Beasts and Flowers collaboration on Isobel’s website.
D.H. Lawrence’s poetry collection Birds, Beasts and Flowers was first published by Martin Secker Ltd on 9 October 1923, printed by The Riverside Press in Edinburgh. These poems, written between 1920 and 1923, include some of Lawrence's most compelling reflections on the vibrant 'otherness' of the non-human world. Lawrence started work on the poems in this collection during a stay in San Gervasio near Florence in September 1920. He continued working on individual poems in Taormina (Sicily), Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and Australia before completing the book in New Mexico in February 1923. Many of his most famous and oft-anthologised poems like ‘Bats’, ‘Snake’ and ‘Mosquito’ come from this ground-breaking collection.
Over the course of this long-running interdisciplinary project artist Doug Robertson and poet Isobel Dixon are responding in various ways to the impetus of Lawrence’s work, and to each other’s. Their own Birds Beasts & Flowers project will be a joint and several contemplation, an interweaving ‘conversation’ with the themes of travel, encounters with nature, our identity, mortality, sexuality and otherness. There are elements of response, renewal and rebuttal to Lawrence’s work in their approach. All of this is set in sharp relief by the immediate and growing challenges of our climate peril.
D.H. Lawrence is one of our greatest nature writers, yet his nature writing is often overshadowed by other controversies. David Herbert Lawrence was, and is, a controversial writer - he still shocks, exasperates and challenges. This new Birds, Beasts & Flowers journey aims to bring fresh focus in particular to Lawrence’s passion and genius as an early eco-writer. Lawrence was a great admirer of another brilliant nature writing poet-novelist, Thomas Hardy, and this influence shows in his work. Birds, Beasts & Flowers will also weave in echoes from other nature-loving poets and artists, like Ted Hughes, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Katherine Mansfield (who was a friend of Lawrence’s).
Doug’s work for this new 21st Century Birds, Beasts & Flowers includes illustrations, sculptures, assemblages, wood carvings, a flicker book and more. Other prize-winning artists will be involved in the final project. The American composer Stephen Montague will compose a short sequence of new musical works to accompany the exhibition and performance.
The proposed exhibition and poetry performance series will take place around the country, including of course D.H. Lawrence’s birthplace, Nottingham. Also on our agenda, details to be confirmed in due course, are London, Birmingham, Newcastle, Cambridge, Hastings, Norwich, Cornwall and several venues in Scotland. The exhibition and performances will be accompanied by an exhibition catalogue and/or collection of the poems enhanced by Doug’s illustrations, with photographs of his assemblages and carvings . A collection of Isobel’s poems, possibly with some line drawings only, will be published afterwards. All of this will be complete and available to readers by 2023, the centenary of the original Birds Beasts and Flowers publication.
Hebridean Thrush - from Ealta/Birdfall
‘Hebridean’ Thrush - study from Carinish, North Uist
Last two days of the exhibition at One Tree Bookshop in Petersfield, Hampshire. Hope you can pop along and see a selection of the drawings from recent publications and collaborations with Donald S Murray and Isobel Dixon.
