JAMES DODDS
inside front cover
1. Cromer Crabber woodcut – edition of 150 23 x 29 cms 9 x 113⁄8 ins
JAMES DODDS Working Boats Including Bermuda Fitted Dinghies
2016
www.messums.com 28 Cork Street, London W1S 3NG Telephone: +44 (0)20 7437 5545
Rites of passage James Dodds’ pictures look as though they’ve been created with the use of an adze, a caulking mallet and a rip saw, but that’s not surprising when you discover that these were the tools he once wielded as a shipwright before ever he picked up a paintbrush. The disappearing shipbuilding skill of ‘lofting out’, of preparing a boat’s lines with battens, is alive and well in James’ work; which is why his paintings come as such a shock. The scantlings of his art are more than just the dimensions of an aesthetic – they work – in the practical sense of that word: you feel his boats would float. They hang there, powerful receptacles of adventurous voyage, ready to launch, simply awaiting your embarkation. They are the next best thing to owning a vessel for real. From his craft we can see how boats are put together; how timber becomes planking after being riveted to a rib-cage, how a bow can thrust aside seas after stems are backed up by aprons, how decking can support rope-hauling sailors with an underlay of beams and shelves. This is the anatomy of survival: when it works you get from Plymouth to Virginia, when it doesn’t you don’t even get from Bodrum to Kos… Brightlingsea in Essex, where James was born in 1957, is famous for building boats that work; from Thames sailing barges to deep sea fishing smacks. So, too, is Wivenhoe, the village, just a few miles up river, where his studio is based.
2. Varuna, Horn Timbers oil on linen canvas 90 x 100 cms 353⁄8 x 393⁄8 ins
Here it was in 1820 that the Marquis of Anglesey swung himself into town
‘It’s a lovely thing being able to turn a three-dimensional drawing into a
on crutches; having lost a leg at Waterloo, to order a 130 ton cutter, the
boat,’ said James, with a wry smile: knowing that today he does the reverse.
Pearl, which he then sailed round to the Solent to show off to his fellow members of the Royal Yacht Squadron.
He rues the loss of elm from the English countryside: ‘Elm is the best timber for boat-building below the waterline and now it’s all gone. Yet once upon a time
More than a century later the slipways of the village were sliding MTBs
it defined East Anglia. Constable painted those classic silhouetted trees against
and MLs into the muddy Colne to help fight another European war.
the big skies.’
It is a sleepy river today but it has floated more than 5,000 craft over the
Another loss – which is captured for posterity in James’ pictures – is
course of 200 years of shipbuilding, and it is where James wields his brush
plasma red Bermudan cedar, now also virtually unobtainable.
in atavistic sweeps; as though he is rowing across the picture.
He abhors the loss of such majestic trees and tries to utilise timber where
It was as a sailor that James got up close and personal with the sea, firstly
he can: obsolete pier planking, driftwood and even the roof of a family beach
aboard a sailing dinghy and then on local smacks exploring the wetlands
hut which was demolished in a great flood have all been used as ‘canvasses’.
of East Anglia. Then, as a schoolboy, he joined the Baltic ketch, Solvig, as mate and aboard her he made passages to France, the Netherlands and along the East Coast carrying delta tourists. So much for salt water, next came the ships themselves and the 15-yearold James became a trainee shipwright at Walter Cook’s Maldon boatyard at the top end of the River Blackwater, where he started steaming planks, flattening roves, and shaving spars. As he worked he found himself visualising the end result. Here he built barge boats, winkle brigs and smack skiffs. His work also included re-converting Thames motor-barges back into spritsail-rigged craft as the fashion for heritage sailing craft took off.
The more he worked physically on individual boats, as a shipwright, the greater grew his metaphysical vision of all craft and their universal message of voyage: the rite of passage through life, until one day he could ignore the bigger picture no longer. And so he went to learn how to express himself effectively firstly at Colchester Art School, then Chelsea before finally taking his MA at the Royal College of Art. ‘All that gave me a self-confidence which I didn’t have when I left school, but at the end of it, although people said London was the place to “make it” as an artist, I was itching to get back on my home turf,’ he said.
3. Stern of a Crabber oil on linen 90 x 60 cms 353⁄8 x 235⁄8 ins
Back on the banks of his beloved Colne where his father, Andrew, had
We set off from the shed in James’ back garden where three, belt-driven
worked as an illustrator for the Radio Times – it was he who gave a face
Victorian printing presses compress his wood and linocuts, to head for
to the Archers, and where his mother Wendy framed the pictures he sold
the pub, but a big spring tide had cut off half the village.
privately, James started making his striking linocuts.
‘They must have left the barrier open,’ said James: contemporary
They employ the same kind of naïve – in the sense of a child’s wonder
Wivenhoe is now protected by a tidal gate, so instead we doubled back
at the world – beauty that Stanley Spencer embraced; an England of
to his studio which overlooks a part of the river which hadn’t flooded.
stained glass windows, church floor brass rubbings, and an arts and crafts immediacy, in a timeline rolled into a fish-eye lens view. James’ unique take on the waterworld is a place where the waves break in frothy fingers on the shingle, just clear of beach boat keels, the skies scream with banner clouds of forecast overhead, and gulls wheel across a rising wind. He will drive to each location, take photographs and make sketches: at Cromer he arrived at dawn as the fishing boats were coming back ashore. James was amazed to note that they are deliberately beached broadside to; the crewman squatting on the gunnels to roll the seaward side higher against the breakers while the tractor-driver gets a shackle on the stern. Such detail is what makes these images so impressive.
A low sun is glittered across the river and James tugged the mooring line of his kayak to make sure she was lying in the rill. He and Catherine, his wife, a former V&A book-binder, use the craft to explore local creeks. It seems incredible that such an intimate marshy location can provide an inspiration that is empathised with globally: he has exhibited in London, New York and St Petersburg. One clue to such international appeal is found inside the studio where James shows me a paint-making machine which grinds and mixes pigment and linseed oil at different speeds. Pigment which includes river mud. ‘I wash out the salt,’ he said, ‘after all sienna and umber are used as pigments why not estuarine mud? They are all part of our planet.’ A universal vision rooted in Mother earth; why not indeed.
Dick Durham Renowned sailor and yachting journalist
4. Foureen carved shallow relief on oak wood panel 61 x 61 cms 24 x 24 ins
5. Colchester Fishing Smack oil on board in 5 panels 153 x 610 cms 601⁄4 x 2401⁄8 ins
“Home of Bermuda’s Greatest Treasures” Insurance courtesy of Colonial Insurance Co.
Bermuda Fitted Dinghies
P.O. Box HM 1929 Hamilton HM HX Bermuda www.bermudamasterworks.org
Masterworks Museum of Bermuda Art is delighted to have been gifted two
outstanding works (nos. 6 and 7 in this catalogue) by James Dodds, marine
architectural artist. This has been made possible by one of the benefactors to the museum and a patron of Messum’s gallery.
What makes these additions unique is the historical significance of the image painted on cedar, which was the wood used to make the working boats in
Bermuda in the 1800’s that morphed into the Bermuda fitted dinghy. Stripped of its sails and rigging, the viewer is confronted by the form and simplicity of
the fourteen foot vessel– not knowing that the crew comprised of six or seven bodies! These two images have enormous historical and cultural significance, which is at the heart of the Masterworks Museum.
James Dodds outside Masterworks
Tom Butterfield
Director of Masterworks, Museum of Bermuda Art
opposite
6. Bermuda Fitted Dinghy “Victory” Patron: HRH The Prince of Wales, KG KT GCB OM
oil on cedar panel 103 x 123 cms 40 1⁄2 x 483⁄8 ins
Acquired for Masterworks, Museum of Bermuda Art
7. Bermuda Fitted Dinghy “HDC II” oil on canvas 90 x 120 cms 353⁄8 x 471⁄4 ins
Acquired for Masterworks, Museum of Bermuda Art
8. Bermuda Fitted Dinghy “Shamrock” (bow detail) oil on canvas 90 x 90 cms 35 3⁄8 x 35 3⁄8 ins
9. Bermuda Fitted Dinghy “Victory” oil on canvas 110 x 120 cms 431⁄4 x 471⁄4 ins
10. Bermuda Fitted Dinghy “Victory II” oil on canvas 90 x 150 cms 353⁄8 x 59 ins
11. Bermuda Fitted Dinghy “Shamrock” oil on canvas 90 x 150 cms 353⁄8 x 59 ins
12. Bermuda Fitted Dinghy “Victory II” (stern detail) oil on linen 90 x 90 cms 353⁄8 x 353⁄8 ins
13. Number One oil on two roof panels 130 x 335 cms 511⁄8 x 1317⁄8 ins
14. Winklebrig “Breeze” oil on roof panel 130 x 169 cms 51 x 661⁄2 ins
15. Grey Crabber oil on linen 90 x 120 cms 353⁄8 x 471⁄4 ins
16. New Timbers on a Norfolk Crabber oil on linen 111 x 90 cms 431⁄2 x 351⁄2 ins
17. “Peapod” Under Construction oil on linen 97 x 76 cms 38 x 297⁄8 ins
18. Roskilde 19 ft. Eel Boat oil on linen canvas 60 x 90 cms 235⁄8 x 353⁄8 ins
19. Building a Grand Lake Canoe, “Kingfisher” oil on linen 97 x 97 cms 38 x 38 ins
20. Whelker, Stern oil on linen 100 x 100 cms 39 3⁄8 x 39 3⁄8 ins
21. Old Aldeburgh Beach Boat oil on linen 81 x 92 cms 32 x 36 ins
22. Orange Lifeboat oil on linen 95 x 95 cms 37 3⁄8 x 37 3⁄8 ins
23. Red Boat woodcut - edition of 50 107 x 107 cms 421⁄8 x 421⁄8 ins
Biography 1957 1972 1973 1976 1977 1981 1984 2007
Born in Brightlingsea Mate on Baltic Trader, Solvig Apprentice Shipwright, Walter Cook & Son, Maldon (until 1976) Shipbuilding Industry Training Board, Southampton (until 1974) Colchester School of Art (Foundation) Chelsea School of Art (until 1980) Royal College of Art (until 1984) (won Anstruther Award 1983) Started Jardine Press, Stoke-by-Nayland Received Doctorate from the University of Essex
Selected Group Exhibitions 1991 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997
Summer Show, Royal Academy of Arts “Six Artists”, Wetzlar, Germany John Callahan Gallery, Boston, USA “4 from Wivenhoe”, Courcoux & Courcoux, Stockbridge “Ultra Marine”, Liverpool Maritime Museum “Forth, Tyne, Dogger”, Brewery Arts, Cirencester Peter Scott Gallery, Lancaster University “The Sea”, Black Swan Arts, Frome City Art Gallery, Leeds “An English Perspective”, Union of Artists, St Petersburg, Russia “Marine Artists”, Mall Galleries, London 1998 Summer Show, Royal Academy of Arts 1999 Eastern Open, (Best in Show) King’s Lynn Arts Centre, Norfolk Mystic Seaport; New York Ship Terminal, USA Summer Show, Royal Academy of Arts 2000 Hunting Art Prizes, Royal College of Art Summer Show, Royal Academy of Arts “Alphabet Soup”, Printworks, Sudbury 2001 Messum’s, Cork Street, London 2003 Messum’s, Cork Street, London 2006 Messum’s, Cork Street, London 2007 Messum’s, Cork Street, London 2008 “East Coast Influences”, Messum’s, Cork Street, London Geedon Gallery, Fingringhoe, Colchester “Salthouse 08: SEAhouse, LIGHThouse, SPIRIThouse”, Salthouse, Essex The Nottage Maritime Institute, Wivenhoe, Essex 2009 Messum’s, Cork Street, London 2010 “Atelier, Artists & Artists’ Estates”, Messum’s, Cork Street, London “East Coast Influences”, Messum’s, Cork Street, London 2011 “New English Art Club and Others”, Geedon Gallery, Fingringhoe, Colchester 2013 “Masterpieces, Art and East Anglia” Sainsbury Centre, UEA, Norwich. 2014 “Easterlies”, Abbey Walk Gallery, Grimsby. 2014 Messum’s, Cork Street, London
Shipshape Tour 2001 Firstsite at The Minories Art Gallery, Colchester 2002 Whitstable & Herne Bay Museums & Art Galleries, Kent Black Swan Arts, Frome, Somerset Quay Arts, Newport, Isle of Wight Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle, Co. Durham 2003 National Maritime Museum Cornwall, Falmouth 2003–4 National Maritime Museum, Greenwich 2004 Messum’s Fine Art, Cork Street, London
Shipshape & The Year of the Sea
2005 Time & Tide, Great Yarmouth Buckenham Gallery, Southwold Hartlepool Art Gallery, Hartlepool Thurso & Wick, Scotland Fermoy Gallery, King’s Lynn Arts Centre (with Guy Taplin) Hayletts Gallery, Maldon Chappel Galleries, Chappel
Selected Solo Exhibitions 1983 1984 1985 1986
“Icarus”, The Minories, Colcester “Peter Grimes”, at the 37th Aldeburgh Festival Ship of Fools”, Hatton Gallery, Newcastle Upon Tyne The Quay Theatre Gallery, Sudbury “Fish, Flesh or Fowl”, Christchurch Mansion, Ipswich (with Bridget Heriz-Smith and Jane Truzzi-Franconi) 1989 Printworks, Colchester (and in 1990,1995 and 1997) Bircham Contemporary Arts, Norfolk (and in 1992, 1995 and 1999) 1990 “The Shipwright’s Trade”, at the 43rd Aldeburgh Festival Chappel Galleries, Chappel, Essex (and in 1994) St John Street Gallery, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk 1991 “From the Glasshouse”, Heffers Gallery, Cambridge 1992 Sue Rankin Gallery, London (two man show with John Bratby RA) “Peter Grimes”, Christchurch Mansion, Ipswich 1995 “Wild Man”, at the 48th Aldeburgh Festival Simbouras Gallery, Athens, Greece 1998 “On The Beach”, at the 51st Aldeburgh Festival “Waterworks”, Printworks, Sudbury “Boatshow”, North House Gallery, Manningtree 2000 “Full Circle”, at the 53rd Aldeburgh Festival 2001 North House Gallery, Manningtree (two man show with John Reay) “Blue Boat”, University of Essex Gallery “Shipshape” Tour Firstsite at The Minories Art Gallery, Colchester 2002 Whitstable & Herne Bay Museums & Art Galleries, Kent Black Swan Arts, Frome, Somerset Quay Arts, Newport, Isle of Wight Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle, Co. Durham 2003 National Maritime Museum Cornwall, Falmouth 2003–4 National Maritime Museum, Greenwich
2004 Messum’s Fine Art, Cork Street, London “Shipshape” & “The Time of the Sea” Tours 2005 Time & Tide, Great Yarmouth Buckenham Gallery, Southwold Hartlepool Art Gallery, Hartlepool Thurso and Wick, Scotland Fermoy Gallery, King’s Lynn Arts Centre (with Guy Taplin) Hayletts Gallery, Maldon “Lifeboat”, Chappel Galleries, Chappel, Essex 2006 Messum’s, Cork Street, London 2007 “Fore and Aft”, University of Essex Gallery Messum’s, Cork Street, London 2008 “Vessels of the East Coast”, St Barbe Museum & Art Gallery, Lymington, Hampshire “Mainly Linocuts”, Hayletts Gallery, Maldon, Essex 2009 “American Boats”, Messum’s Fine Art, Cork Street, London “25 Years of Jardine Press”, Messum’s Fine Art, Cork Street, London Bircham Gallery, Holt, Norfolk (two man show with Stephen Hendersen) 2010 “James Dodds and the Jardine Press”, Lewis Elton Gallery, University of Surrey. Dowling Walsh, Rockland, Maine, USA 2011 Church Street Gallery, Saffron Walden, Essex Messum’s, Cork Street, London. 2012 Dowling Walsh, Rockland, Maine, USA Drang Gallery, Padstow. Hayletts Gallery, Maldon, Essex. 2013 Messum’s, Cork Street, London 2013 Bircham Contemporary Arts, Holt, Norfolk 2015 Messum’s, Cork Street, London. 2015/16 “Wood to Water”, Firstsite, Colchester 2016 Messum’s, Cork Street, London.
Collections
Britten-Pears Library, Aldeburgh;Victoria and Albert Museum; Clacton & Rochford Hospitals; Chelmsford and Essex Museums; Ipswich Borough Council, Museums and Galleries; Colchester Borough Council; Horniman Museum, London; National Maritime Museum, Greenwich; UCS East Contemporary Art Collection, Ipswich; MMoFA, Madison, Georgia, USA; The Sainsbury Centre, UEA Norwich; and many private collectors
Thanks to:
Royal Naval Dockyard Museum, Bermuda front cover image Winklebrig “Breeze” (no. 14.) oil on roof panel 130 x 169 cms 51 x 661⁄2 ins
back cover image Red Boat (no. 23.) woodcut - edition of 50 107 x 107 cms 421⁄8 x 421⁄8 ins
A book about James Dodds
“This is an artist, that as a former boatbuilder, is simply at one with his subject.”
IAN COLLINS Born in Norfolk, and now living in Southwold and London, Ian Collins hails from a long line of Broadland boat-builders. His writings on East Anglian art have appeared in the Eastern Daily Press since 1978 and widely elsewhere. His books include A Broad Canvas (1990), Making Waves: Artists in Southwold (2005) and Water Marks: Art in East Anglia (2010), with monographs on Guy Taplin (2007), John McLean (2009) and John Craxton (2011). He has co-produced a television documentary on Margaret Mellis (1993) and appeared on BBC2’s Coast and The Culture Show, also curating exhibitions from the 50th Aldeburgh Festival in 1997 to Salthouse 08 and the Mary Newcomb memorial show at Norwich Castle (2009). He has worked with Messum’s in London’s Cork Street for many years.
In this richly illustrated volume Ian Collins charts the voyage James Dodds has made from boatbuilder to artist. “It is not often that art is able to curtsy to craft – but James Dodds’ fabulous and strangely moving paintings of wooden boat building are a superb testament to the skills of marine craftsmen.” Felix Dennis, publisher, poet and art collector.
TIDE LINES
Pen and ink drawing of Ian Collins by Andrew Dodds for East Anglia Drawn, 1984
DODDS
John Franks
JAMES DODDS
TIDE LINES
“Magnificent. A re-vision. The marvellous as he has shown it.” Seamus Heaney on James Dodds’ response to his poem From Lightenings viii.
A short film, “Shaped by the Sea”, about James Dodds, produced by Emily Harris for Classic Yacht TV released in May 2014: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDoPZf_Iooc
Ian Collins
Salthouse Altarpiece (Cromer Crabber) triptych. 2008 Oil on linen. 36 x 108in (92 x 275cm) (see p174–5)
Ian Collins
TIDE LINES
THE LIFE AND ART OF JAMES DODDS
IN THIS EVOCATIVE VOLUME Ian Collins charts the voyage James Dodds has made both from the literal to the poetic and from shipwright to painter, printmaker and fine-press publisher. Richly illustrated with pictures spanning more than three decades of inspired endeavour, the biography adds a supporting cast of artists, poets and other nautical characters. It also includes a wider study of “boats the sea has made” – vernacular vessels from the Shetlands to the Scillies and across the Atlantic to New England which punctuate the artist’s intriguing story.
IAN COLLINS offers the perspective of a writer steeped in the art of East Anglia. His engaging text is informed by a decade of writing about James in exhibition catalogues and regional books, and also draws on the artist’s own biographical notes. TIDE LINES… marks on the shore left at the tide’s highest point, made of whatever flotsam and jetsam, litter and treasure, the sea flings up.The tides’ lunar cycle could also be a metaphor for the ebb and flow of the creative process.The line between land and sea is constant and ever changing, and this state of flux and fixture is the place that art inhabits. From the small craft of the shore line James Dodds has created a truly seaworthy art.
by Ian Collins
(Jacket) North Norfolk Beach Boat triptych. 2009 Oil on linen. 38 x 116in (96 x 295cm)
Published by Jardine Press with Studio Publications 240 x 300mm, 216 pp. 300 illustrations in full colour
Edition of 200 Special Hardbacks in slipcases, signed and numbered: £150 (Including exclusive hand-printed, signed and numbered linocut, worth £250)
Standard Hardback edition with Jacket: £35 “Tide Lines is a joy from start to finish and in these miserable days is one of those rare books that make one glad to be alive.” Review by Ken Worpole in “Caught by the River”
“This is a book to treasure, relish and enjoy on many different levels.” Review by Peter Willis in Classic Boat
JAMES DODDS Timelapse film of James Dodds painting Colchester fishing smack “Peace” in fourteen days. Lofting out the traditional way and then painting onto 5 panels. https://youtu.be/Co0VrnreSHA
“Realism and mystery are two opposing strands whose friction make James’s art so compelling.” Review of Tide Lines by David Burnett in The Marine Quarterly Ian Collins is a writer and curator who hails from a long line of Norfolk boat-builders. His Tide Lines book on James Dodds was runner-up for the 2013 New Angle Prize for Literature. The title also won the Art and Photography prize in the 2012 East Anglian Book Awards. Announcing the award judge Mary Muir said: “This is a book written from the heart by someone who not only cares passionately for our region but for the artists who help us to see, understand and celebrate it.
ISBN 978-1-910993-02-6 Publication No: CDX Published by David Messum Fine Art © David Messum Fine Art All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Studio, Lords Wood, Marlow, Buckinghamshire. Tel: 01628 486565 www.messums.com Photography: Doug Atfield Printed by DLM-Creative
“Tide Lines is a homage to one of our most individual and authentic artistic voices. This beautifully produced and illustrated book charts, in rich biographical detail, the journey of James Dodds from shipwright to internationally regarded artist and fine-press publisher. It is also a wonderful homage to boats, the art of boat-building and what it means to live in a place shaped physically and culturally by the sea.” Ian has also written monographs on John Craxton, John McLean and Guy Taplin. His Water Marks: Art and East Anglia volume features many Messum’s artists – including James Dodds. James was also included in the Masterpieces: Art and East Anglia book Ian co-wrote and edited for the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, which was the overall winner in the 2013 East Anglian Book Awards.
ISBN 978-1-910993-02-6
www.messums.com
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