James Hawkins (artist)


James Allan Hawkins is an English painter and film maker associated with Scottish Highland landscape. He lives, works and exhibits at his open studio RhueArt in Rhue, three miles North of Ullapool.

Early life

Hawkins was educated at Monkton Combe School, Bath. He went on to study at Wimbledon School of Art, London and Ruskin School of Drawing, Oxford University. After graduating he moved to the Highlands of Scotland in 1978 with his wife Flick.

Career

His early work was figurative and mostly painted outside, on-location on the West coast of Scotland. After a commission in 1986 to produce stage sets for a production of The Brahan Seer at Eden Court Theatre, Inverness his work became larger and semi abstract. He exhibited at the 369 Gallery, Edinburgh during the 1980s and in 1989 he won Warwick Arts Trust prize. In 1996 his paintings were part of Heartlands an overview of Scottish landscape painting at the City Art Centre, Edinburgh. Commissioned to paint large polytych for Inverness airport in 2004. In 2005 he began making short video films about nature’s microcosm. In 2012 Hawkins has broken away from his traditional medium or acrylic on stretched canvas and started working with carbon fiber and core board to create freestanding irregular shaped cut-out pieces.

Style

Hawkins work has always concentrated on landscape. Early paintings were figurative painted in watercolour on location. After he turned to acrylic his practice became increasingly studio based but with reference to frequent camping and walking trips throughout Scotland. The work has been abstract at times and representational at others a progression that the artist describes as "being like climbing a spiral staircase, by turns arriving at a similar point but from a different perspective". The surfaces of the paintings are complex and textured the artist applying paint with large painting knives and pieces of board. Most recently he has been making cut out paintings, fragments of landscape that are freestanding irregular shapes mounted on carbon fiber.

Solo exhibitions