Collection: Allan J Robertson

Following a period working in the Engineering industry Allan J Robertson completed the Art Foundation Course at Leith School of Art before studying at Edinburgh College of Art from 2005-2009 gaining a BA (Hons) Painting & Drawing. Since then he has worked full time from his Edinburgh based studio. Robertson regularly contributes to group shows across the country most recently at the Paisley Art Institute's 132nd Annual Open Exhibition in July - September, 2020. His work is held in private collections in Scotland, Ireland, Germany, USA and Canada.

Robertson's work channels the experience of architectural space through the medium of painting. This interest centres specifically upon ambiguous spaces at the edges of the built environment where boundaries between civilisation and nature, order and disorder, past and present have become blurred and indistinct. These ambiguous sites become subject matter for a painting practice which mines equally marginal territories, flitting between abstract/representational, accidental/intentional and constructive/destructive approaches to image making. 

Recent work has focused upon the phenomena of the Modern ruin, taking particular interest in sites whose usage has undergone a form of transformation over the passage of time. Reflecting notions of appropriation and misuse that typically occur within these spaces following abandonment, disparate approaches from the history of painting are sampled and layered, creating paintings rich in texture, colour and a strong sense of place.