Particularly as Colin Robertson’s show was the first to be cancelled due to Covid 19, we are delighted to present a two part show of his drawings.
Please note our new opening hours: Wed Fri Sat 12-5. Thurs.12-6 and by appointment.
Part 1.
MARY DON’T YOU WEEP
It’s the backing to Aretha Franklin by the South Carolina Community Choir, the hand-clapping, the guitars and the organ that grabbed me.
All Saints The Mangrove Steel Band’ and ‘The Undivided’ played reggae and jazz in our street when we lived just round the corner from All Saints Road in London’s Notting Hill. At that time I made drawings and paintings of three West Indian women in Afros and platform heels seen on the Circle Line - they are somewhat reinvented in a number of drawings.
Bad Moon “Can we have some music” was the cry that often went up to the bridge from the deck of the Ross Cougar.
A couple of years back I was in a record store in Glasgow. ‘Bad Moon Rising’ came up on the turntable. Instantly I was carried back fifty-odd years to being one of the yellow oilskin-clad figures on that deck, knee deep in fish, knife in hand: ‘fish in the other and two in the air’.
These drawings all date from the period just before Covid. The second batch follows on chronologically.
Mary Don’t You Weep
Part 2.
WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT THEN
I’ve often used words and/or text in drawing but, for a time at least, they appear to have taken over, to become the main building block of the image on paper and spell out what the drawings are about Statements – questions - no answers or resolutions but, on the positive side, the fact of wonder.