RSA Scottish Art
Dunes and Sea
 | Artist: James D. Robertson |
| Title: Dunes and Sea | |
| Year: c. 1989 | |
| Medium: oil on canvas | |
| Dimensions: | |
| Suggested topic: | |
| Source: RSA Diploma Collection | |
| View full screen image of this work | |
| Open print version of this work | |
| © the artist | |
| Description: James D Robertson is a landscape painter whose works stand apart from traditional interpretations of reality and concentrate on more personal interpretations. Dunes and Sea uses bold and resonant combinations of colour and vigorous brushwork to articulate a personal expression. Although the marks in the painting are very broad and powerful, it is possible to interpret features that help us to understand scale and perspective in the scene. The foreground section is dotted with marks that could represent clumps of fine strands of grass. Black sections in the middle ground seem to represent rocks, and the jagged shapes of the sea are easily recognised below the horizon line. The potent blues and complimentary yellows make this scene burst with colour. Although it depicts a landscape, this painting was created in the artist's studio from his imagination. His use of paint and energetic colours contrasts with the static quality of the composition, which is built up in a structure of horizontal and vertical lines. It seems as though the vertical frame represents a window on the world, which we are looking through to see the beach beyond.It feels like a stormy day in this scene. If this is an imaginary scene, it is certainly one with a feeling of authenticity to it. The artist must have had vivid memories of this type of landscape and a powerful ability to communicate it to us. Have you ever created an imaginary landscape? You could do this by using places from memory combined with other elements, some of which might even be quite absurd or unusual such as a skyscraper within a forest, or a desert in the middle of a city. | |
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