Douglas Robertson
‘Douglas Robertson is a landscape Artist in the best sense of that description, committed to a fundamental exploration of the relationship of human beings to their natural environment.
Robertson’s work is steeped in poetry and oral tradition. But he makes use of folklore and poetry rather than illustrating it. Instead the references in his work become themselves part of a living folklore, a poetical visualisation which takes one closer to nature through its spirits.’
Murdo Macdonald in The Scotsman
Douglas Robertson was born in Dundee, and studied Art at the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art from 1984 to 1989, gaining a BA (Hons) Degree in Fine Art and a Post-Graduate Diploma in Drawing and Painting. In 1996-97 he studied at Jordanhill College in Glasgow, qualifying with a PGCE in Secondary Education. He is currently Head of Art at Wykeham House School in Fareham, Hampshire.
He has exhibited widely throughout the UK, and his work is part of many public and private collections.
His work has been greatly influenced by poetry, and the quest to understand his sense of place within the landscape of his native Scotland. The principles of geopoetics first came into his studies when Scots poet Harvey Holton introduced him to the work of Kenneth White in the 1980s.
‘My introduction to Kenneth White’s poems was with a copy of ‘Atlantica’, bought in Galignani, the Anglo-American bookshop in Paris. Harvey Holton had shown me work of a Scottish poet writing and publishing in France, with whom he thought I would empathise. The poems in the book were alive with the images, mood and colour I was trying to achieve with my art.
In the years since that first introduction, White’s words and the concept of geopoetics have played no small part in shaping my craft and vision; understanding how to read and interpret the landscape, not only in its physical appearance but also in its spiritual aspects. Whether facing into a skell wind on the beaches of the Firth of Clyde, or being kissed by the soft rain on high moorland, the shadow of the poet stands close, looking over my shoulder.’