Pale aqua ripples blend with waves of sky blue clouds. The painting is titled Fortitude by artist James Robertson. In the distance, an obscure mashing of sky and waves, a man in a paddle boat wrestles with his fate as a curl of colour slowly sinks him.

“I worked in industrial design so I could always draw. I was an engineer at the time.”

One afternoon, a friend asked James to paint something as a housewarming present.

“She asked me to paint something abstract,because I was good with colours,” remembers James. “I picked up a brush and started painting. I ended up painting a sort of a desert landscape with clouds and sort of freaked myself out. And I couldn't stop. That was the beginning of it. I loved it.”

He reflects on that desert landscape he first painted. “It was a feeling, really…like I’ve been doing it my whole life but I’d never painted before.”

James would paint after work every night. He began selling more and more paintings until he decided to quit his day job. The desert is a motif that runs through his body of work.

“I just attack a blank canvas, pick a colour and start to see what happens,” laughs James. “It just really flows and I never know what I'm gonna get it. It has a life of its own.”

In James’ arresting, vast, landscapes - the sky dominates the scene, the clouds erupt, everything is subordinate to nature reaching for the sublime. When James is asked about

the sky, he quips, “There’s something about the serenity of it. It’s like a theatre. An empty scene. I love looking at cloud formations. And they’re always changing. That’s the beauty…the freedom.”

He reflects on his favourite painting, The Carbon Trader, “I gave it to my mum to hang on to because I knew I would sell it so it hangs on her wall.” In the painting, a man stands tall with a gas mask on. In the distance a coal fired power station protrudes from the earth. James adds, “we’re all concerned about the environment.”

Pollution and the environment was a subject that one of James’ favourite painters, J.M.W. Turner, thought about on the canvas. “Steam, rain and wind it’s called,” reflects James. “It’s very atmospheric and dramatic.” He cites two other artists work as inspirations; Blue Poles by Jackson Pollock and a photograph by Ansel Adams titled Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico.

James describes his inspirations as “sensational.” They’re expressive works that exploit dramatic environments in order to carve an emotional landscape into the hearts of the audience.

While peering into the sky, after being absorbed by its immensity in James’ work, the lines from Hegel come to mind, “Art has the task to reveal the truth in its sensuos form.

James Robertson jamesrobertson.com.au
@james_robertson_artist