The Monthly interviews artist, Colin Robertson – Part 4 – Re-exploring art, working with colour and working in The Loft

After recovery from your illness, you started to explore art again?

I started to explore art and I started to draw and paint again, I was exploring this part of my life a little more seriously, I started to look at colour. It was quite a meditative process. I was working pretty much every day, and I slowly developed a body of work. Covid, and the isolation that forced upon me, also helped me develop my artistic work.

It was quite different from the way I had worked before. Much freer, much less constrained. There were a series of reasons for that. I had been ill as I said, and then I retired, so I was never going to work again. That gave me time, lots of free time. I was for the first time, completely free.

I became friends with a person who ran a printing company, so I was able to experiment with printing. I began to make things, work with wood, doors. I eventually outgrew the room in my house where I was working and so I have a studio now which is a huge space in a loft in Ballylesson.

You already have a high level of skills, both technical and artistic. What is the key development during this period as an artist?

I think there is a spiritual element to the work. I think the only other time I felt the same way as closely as this is was when I was working with Aboriginal people. I am also trying to allow the work to come, to simply become, rather than try to directly across particular questions.

I think there is an element to my life which I can only describe as being fragmented and so I find that I am often working with patterns. I think that is an approach, the underlying theme of which, is trying to find connection. A connection with people and planet.

You also work with wood and doors?

I always relate the idea of canvas with serious painters. I am not that kind of artist. I tend to work with material which gives me the most control over the situation. I like working with plywood and I do like working with doors.

I like the physical beauty of doors, the technical aspects which go into making a door. Mahogany doors are truly beautiful and of course doors let us into spaces and all that that entails. We all have a relationship with doors.

I do like taking the idea of taking objects which have a particular purpose, and then playing with that object, in this instance doors, and effectively reconstructing them into something new. I like to saw them into pieces and then put them back together again but, as I said, making something new in the process. Again you could say that the themes of fragmentation and connection permeate my art, and the paintings I produce on the doors again form patterns.

Where to now?

When I was working in London I worked with a couple of guys, one of them was originally from Chicago. He returned to Chicago and his wife opened up a gallery. She became aware of my work and they were having a celebration of the opening of the gallery and I was asked to put together an exhibition.

The exhibition will take place there, in Chicago, and the third member of the trio will also be coming over, so the people who used to work together will be meeting up Chicago. We will be seeing each other for the first time in decades.

I have never been one to really promote my work but I am excited about the exhibition and I am proud of the work which will form that exhibition.

And once you return?

When I return from Chicago I will continue working on my art and I will also be aiming to develop the space I am working in. I want to make some repairs to the roof, and things like that, so that other artists can work here as well.

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