With his new cut-outs, Hawkins breaks away from the ‘tyranny of the rectangle’:

James’s work is about Scottish Landscape – not the dour, driech, Spartan Highland moor, but the sparkle of a mountain stream, the languid depth of a loch on a clear day, of a river in spate, of steep craggy outcrops, of fearsome climbs and descents. Here is Nature at its most potent, unaltered by human touch, unexpected, primeval, majestic. He works from memory, the paintings borne out of long walks in the Highland Landscape. These times immersed in the wilderness are crucial to his output. Regarded by many critics as the greatest landscape painter living in Scotland

When I began cutting out paintings I had a notion to draw attention to the painted mark; to celebrate its interwoven complexity, its taut energy and its innate beauty. I aspired to do this without considering so much what the mark represented but really just to see it for itself. I knew I was embarking on an exciting journey but I couldn’t see beyond the next bend in the road.

I now understand that the cut edge defines both the mark and what it represents; cutting into an abstract mark enables me to use it to describe the profile of a mountain, stream, rock etc. The resulting cut-out painting fragment is similar to the way we look at things, we focus in on what we wish to see and temporarily blur out what surrounds it. - James Hawkins 2013

RhueArt Gallery
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Ullapool IV26 2TJ United Kingdom
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