‘Back Rooms (Rosemount Place)’, Robbie Bushe RSA, oil on panel, 2021, 40cm x 87cm

‘Back Rooms (Rosemount Place)’ forms part of DWELL a solo exhibition at the Open Eye Gallery in April 2021

‘Dwell’ is a body of work by Robbie Bushe RSA exploring personal history and living spaces. It begun in 2018 from an indelible childhood memory of Bushe’s from 1975 in Aberdeenshire. It tells of his childhood, coming of age, loss, grief and adult responsibilities from the early 70s to the present, his paintings allowing us to peer in and speculate those shadows, figures and murmurs from the past.

‘Back Rooms’ depicts a cutaway of the three back rooms of the firs floor granite tenement flat in Rosemount Aberdeen where I lived off an on with my Mum from 1978 – 1992.

Robbie Bushe’s practice centres on the depiction of detailed, suggestive narratives, frequently set within expansive architectonic constructions. Bushe has exhibited his narrative paintings since 1990. Inspired by the characters and the places where he has lived and worked, his work has won several national awards, including the inaugural W. Gordon Smith Painting Prize. Most recently he is a shortlisted prize-winner of the 2020 John Moores Painting Prize at the Walker Gallery Liverpool.

Please contact the Open Eye Gallery to enquire about this and other works in the show.

Just before the first COVID-19 lockdown, we took ownership of a 7-year-old Border Terrier called Stanley. As we entered lockdown, my daily walks with Stanley into the Pentland Hills became an essential activity of body and mind. The Pentland Hills are a stone’s throw from our house and week-by-week we got more ambitious on which routes to take and how high to climb and meander.

In early summer 2020, I decided to record our daily walks as part of the national 100 Days Project, designed to encourage anyone to do something creative each day.

My brief to myself was this;

• Prepare 100 sheets of A5 paper with random painted acrylic washes
• Each morning –  make one small ten-minute drawing in pencil directly from a location on the walk on the prepared paper.
• Each afternoon, (usually after studio painting session) use whatever mixed oil colours I had left over on my palette and use them to paint from memory over the drawing.

There was no plan to include Stanley in the studies – he was always very content to sit and look out while I did my drawing – but eventually worked his way into the pictures.

The 100 works are due to be shown at the Open Eye Gallery at some point in 2021. Dates to be confirmed.

Present day, hidden under many forgotten or disused hospitals, are warrens of still- functioning operating theatres, recovery rooms and laboratories. They have a single goal: to bring back the Neanderthals. Why? To see if they and other archaic humans might have their own, different ways to save our planet and give us all a future…

Below: click through images of painting in progress:

NEONEANDERTHALS  is a collaborative project between artists Robbie Bushe and Jeanne Cannizzo making imaginative use of the scientific data on the physical and cultural inheritance left to us by the Neanderthals. Their popular image since the first fossil finds in the 19th century has been of hairy, low-browed, unintelligent beings incapable of symbolic thought who, perhaps deservedly, were killed by invading humans. In 2010 that picture was overturned by DNA discoveries which revealed that Neanderthals and modern humans had at some point interbred.

NEONEANDERTHALS is showing at the Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh from 14 September to 20 October 2019.

Please contact the Royal Scottish Academy to enquire about this and other works in the show.

The Royal Scottish Academy of Art and Architecture
The Mound, Edinburgh, EH2 2EL
Tel: 0131 225 6671

Gallery Opening Hours
Mon to Sat 10 – 5pm, Sun 12 – 5pm

Office hours
Mon to Fri 9:30 – 5pm

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Please contact the Royal Scottish Academy to enquire about this and other works in the show.

The Royal Scottish Academy of Art and Architecture
The Mound, Edinburgh, EH2 2EL
Tel: 0131 225 6671

Gallery Opening Hours
Mon to Sat 10 – 5pm, Sun 12 – 5pm

Office hours
Mon to Fri 9:30 – 5pm

Please contact the Royal Scottish Academy to enquire about this and other works in the show.

The Royal Scottish Academy of Art and Architecture
The Mound, Edinburgh, EH2 2EL
Tel: 0131 225 6671

Gallery Opening Hours
Mon to Sat 10 – 5pm, Sun 12 – 5pm

Office hours
Mon to Fri 9:30 – 5pm

Please contact the Royal Scottish Academy to enquire about this and other works in the show.

The Royal Scottish Academy of Art and Architecture
The Mound, Edinburgh, EH2 2EL
Tel: 0131 225 6671

Gallery Opening Hours
Mon to Sat 10 – 5pm, Sun 12 – 5pm

Office hours
Mon to Fri 9:30 – 5pm

These seven small work form part of 'Invasions and Excavations’ a solo exhibition at the Open Eye Gallery from 21 April – 6 May 2017.

Making very small paintings is not as straightforward as one might imagine. I used to call them ‘palette cleaners’ as I tried to make small paintings from the remaining mixed colours on my palette. I was kidding myself mostly as just about never did these paintings work out or did not require their own unique fresh paint. For me small paintings usually come at the end of a body of work, when my confidence is high and am more dexterous. They also enable me to try out some of the ideas which had not made it on the bigger works, or experiment with the colour palette.

These seven small work were all made as I came to the end of the works for the show. I have the illustrator Brecht Evens to thank for the inspiration on the colour palette for a couple of these – his work adorned my studio walls over the winter to remind me to be bolder with my colour.

Please contact the Open Eye Gallery to enquire about these and other works in the show.

‘The Sub Terrestrial Sports Complex’, oil on panel, 2016, 30 x 46cm

‘The Sub Terrestrial Sports Complex’ forms part of ‘Invasions and Excavations’ a solo exhibition at the Open Eye Gallery from 20 April – 6 May 2017.

I have a strange relationship with sport. My childhood is filled with my being the worst at virtually any sports that were thrown at me. I would bunk off ‘games afternoon’ to sneak home and draw cartoons and comic strips. But I was engaging and competing with sport in my private world and desperately wanted to me good at some sport. It never happened but now at least I take pride that I am a keen swimmer. I have always, however, really engaged with sports on tv and radio and the ensuing discussion down the pub – particularly big events. In Summer of 2016,  I watched a fair bit of sport – there was the Olympics, European championships and Andy Murray winning Wimbledon for the second time. As part of my ‘drawing a day’ regime, I would simply draw in a ‘flow state’ and let whatever I was doing or watching have an impact. These resulted in a series stadium environments built on several levels with rough approximations of sporting events (including golf on stilts).  I am not sure what I am getting at with this picture put it was the first of a new batch of pictures made in the summer of 2016 and I think I was just limbering up.

Please contact the Open Eye Gallery to enquire about this and other works in the show.