About Robert

Robert was born at Ross Priory Lodge, Gartocharn, 1947 and attended Bearsden Academy, Glasgow.

He worked as an electrical sign designer at Laird Neon Signs, then as a commercial artist  with MacLehose University Press, Glasgow. 

Got fired.

Robert attended Glasgow School of Art from 1967-71. Teaching Diploma from Jordanhill 71-72. He also taught Art and Design for 34 years in Renfrew  

High and Williamwood High.

Retired in 2006 

Robert has exhibited in: 

• Maclaurin Gallery, Ayr 
• Paisley Art Institute 
• The Affordable Art Fair, Battersea, London 
• The Castle Gallery, Rothesay 
• Compass Gallery, Glasgow 
• Glasgow Herald Open Exhibition. 
• Teachers Art Exhibition, Paisley 
• Glasgow School of Art 
• Stirling University 
• House for an Art Lover 
• Awarded the Costley and Costley prize at the Maclaurin Gallery 2013. 
• Had a solo show at the Beresford Gallery, Ayr 2014. 
• Has works in collections throughout the U.K. and U.S.A.

Robert has a fascination with time, light and space and is currently painting a series of pictures on the theme of “Fallen Angels, Forgotten Film Stars and Secular Saints.”  

These are carefully researched narrative pictures, having a background story and a meaning beyond that which is apparent. The paintings are composed of separate images of actual locations, objects and individuals. These are combined to produce a valid but non- existent reality. 

The story can be accepted by the viewer, re-interpreted, added to, ignored, or some or all of the above.   

His work is influenced by Surrealism, Symbolism and Victorian Paintings and are usually small and intimate pieces around A4 size. Some are miniatures. Some have lettering.  

He produces around 5 or 6 paintings a year using oils on 425 gm watercolour paper or board and only works in natural light.  

He also produces works in the Trompe-L’oeil style, (French; to deceive the eye). These works have a variety of images. 

He is married with four grown up children and lives in Broomhill, Glasgow. 

He is licensed to wear high heels in Carmel, California.  

He does not like photos of himself.

This painting shows Jacqueline Logan, a star of the silent screen now all but forgotten. 

She was born in Texas in 1902 and started her acting career in Colorado before going to Chicago, telling her family she was visiting an uncle. In fact she became a dancer in a theatre, lying about her age to do so. 

Undeterred by a big family row she left there and went to New York appearing on stage and in musicals on Broadway. 

Moving to Hollywood she would appear in over sixty films, her most famous role being Mary Magdalene in Cecil B. De Mille’s 1927 classic “The King of Kings.”

Like many other silent film stars Logan was largely unsuccessful in talkies and turned to writing and directing films, gaining good reviews. 

She retired from the industry in 1934, and died in 1983.

The picture is oil on board and is painted in the Trompe-L’oeil  style, (French, to deceive the eye). The title combines the word and the image.

She is shown in a glamorous pose wearing a lace dress with a simple pearl necklace and a rose, (Rosa Mary Magdalene) pinned to  her shoulder strap. The makeup she is wearing is appropriate for the era.

A relatively new concept it was popularised by companies like Max Factor and the recent inventions of the compact, metal lipstick containers and eye shadow, the latter replacing home-made concoctions of Vaseline and soot !

The colours and shades available were much more limited than those of today. 

She is wearing peach face powder, rose coloured rouge and blue eye shadow. Her eye liner is brown and her lipstick is dark rose in the popular cupid’s bow style of the time. She wears her hair short in a bob, the daring hairstyle of the time.

Bryan Evans is a Scottish based artist who has lived and worked in Glasgow, in the West of Scotland since 1989.

Bryan was born in Pembrokeshire in West Wales in 1964. After one year at Dyfed College of Art in Carmarthen he studied a degree in Fine Art at Loughborough College of Art in Leicestershire, England. 

During this course he visited Glasgow School of Art on a three month exchange visit. Upon graduation he moved to Glasgow and has lived there ever since exhibiting his watercolours and original prints throughout Scotland.

He is an artist who depicts in his paintings and prints the rainy streets and tenement closes of Glasgow, Edinburgh and other Scottish towns and cities. He works mainly in the medias of watercolour paintings, etchings and mezzotints. 

He has work in collections throughout Britain, Europe, and North America, and has gained considerable acclaim with his atmospheric interpretations of wet city streets and moody interiors..

As well as these original pieces, we also stock a wide variety of prints. 33cm x 24cm and 48cm x 17cm  (£18) and 48cm x 33cm (£34).

 I was introduced to painting by my auntie Maria, from Florence, whose main interest in life was culture and the arts. 

When an older child she dragged me through the art galleries and museums of central Italy and filled me with a passion for art, which, along with my desire to be close to Tuscany, the land of my fathers, eventually inspired me to pick up a brush. 

The long summer months of my youth were spent with my Italian friends who had all studied History of Art at high school in a country where every educated person really knew their artistic onions. 

Living in an area where every small hilltop town contains some priceless artistic gem, we made a real effort to visit as many sites of artistic interest as we could and were thus able to follow the development of painting and architecture from the early  

middle-ages right through to modern times.  

I regularly go to my flat in Ponte a Moriano near Lucca solely to paint from where I get an unrivalled choice of  subject matter and inspiration.  

Born in Glasgow, being a Scot and a Glaswegian is an important part of my make up. I can think of no better place to live than the southside of Glasgow, a city with elegant “paintable” suburbs nestled next to ones that are more downbeat. 

Much of the Scottish countryside like the Western Highlands, the farmlands of Ayrshire, our islands like Bute and Arran, the hills of Stirlingshire is often unappreciated by our population and are world class objects to paint, despite the vagaries of our weather.  

As to artistic preferences, I like the work of early painters like Giotto and Fra Angelico, impressionists like Manet and Sisley and modern painters such as Modigliani, Seago and Boldini. If however if I was to put painters in a league table then the Scottish Colourists such as Peploe and Cadell come top.

Working mostly in acrylics and oil, I tend to visit, photograph and sketch my subject and then do the final painting in my small chaotic studio.  

Although mostly self-taught, I have over the years done so many part time evening courses at the Glasgow School of Art in landscape, portrait and figurative painting that in term of hours this must equate to a decent multi year full time course.  

I have exhibited in quite a number of Glasgow and Scottish venues such as The House of an Art Lover, Scotlandart.com, Paisley Art Institute, The Rowan Gallery and for institutions like Christian Aid and McMillans.