James Allan Hawkins (born April 1954) is an English painter and film maker associated with Scottish Highland landscape. He lives, works and exhibits at his open studio RhueArt[1][2][3] in Rhue, three miles North of Ullapool.
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.[citation needed] In 1996 his paintings were part of Heartlands an overview of Scottish landscape painting at the City Art Centre, Edinburgh. Commissioned to paint large polyptych 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.[citation needed]
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".[5] 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,[6] fragments of landscape that are freestanding irregular shapes mounted on carbon fiber.
2011 Perception,[11][12]RhueArt at Dovecot Studios, Edinburgh; Scottish Housing Expo, Inverness
2009 Glasgow Art Fair
2008 Thompson's Galleries, Aldeburgh, London
2005 Millennium Institute, University of the Highlands and Islands; Kilmorack Gallery, The Gallery, Cork Street, London; Art’05 London Contemporary Art fair
Scottish Exhibition, Richmond Hill Gallery, London
2007 A Series of Fortunate Events, Inverness City Centre; Royal Scottish Academy Summer Exhibition, Edinburgh; Water, Wind and Light, Kilmorack Gallery, Beauly
2006 Atlantic Coast, Duff House, Scottish National Galleries, Banff
2005 Dreaming Spires, Edinburgh
2001 Highland Festival ‘Elements’, Animation Collaboration
^Haggith, Mandy. "James Hawkins: Making the Landscape Sing". Northings is a project of the arts development agency for the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. Retrieved 1 November 2011.