woodtowater

Wood t o Water
James Dodds @ Firstsite

Wo o d t o Wa t e r

Wo o d t o Wa t e r
James Dodds @ Firstsite
Anthony Roberts
Ian Collins
Julia Blackburn
Jardine Press 2015

This book accompanies the exhibition
“Wood to Water”
James Dodds @ Firstsite
December 2015
Exhibition curator Marie-France Kittler
Enquiries about purchasing work
to be made to Kristian Day at Messum’s Fine Art
kristian@messums.com 020 7437 5545
Jardine Press Ltd 2015
isbn 978-0-9926877-7-9
Text © Anthony Roberts, Ian Collins, Julia Blackburn, James Dodds
www.jamesdodds.co.uk
www.jardinepress.co.uk
www.firstsite.uk.net
www.messums.com
Photos of James’ work © Douglas Atfield
Additional photos © Mary Dodds and Emily Harris
Design by Catherine Dodds
supported by

Wood to Water is dedicated to
Jeremy Theophilus and Katherine Wood.
Jeremy Theophilus (1948-2015) was a director of The Minories and a Firstsite trustee.
He gave James his first exhibition, in an upstairs room at The Minories in 1983,
while James was still a Royal College of Art student.
Katherine Wood was the first director of Firstsite, and her belief
and perseverance gave Colchester its wonderful new visual arts organisation.
She oversaw James’ 2001 Shipshape show, which then became a national
touring exhibition, catching the eye of London gallery Messum’s,
who has represented James ever since.

Any skilled hand knows
It takes faith to build a boat

Fo r e w o r d
The river flows, both cyclical and linear, always the same, always
different. James Dodds returns to Firstsite. It’s a homecoming, it’s a
new beginning, it’s a beautiful exhibition.
Since his first solo show for us, housed in The Minories in 2001
both James and Firstsite have changed. The journey for Firstsite
has ebbed and flowed, flowed and ebbed, sometimes meandered
and sometimes gushed but has always been carried forward on
the tide of ambition and creativity that gave rise to its birth at the
outset.
Colchester’s curvaceous golden gallery is the child of a community
that dared to dream we could invite an international architect to
build a home for art in the heart of our town. A dream that we
might be able to invite artists to join our own James Dodds, to
invite artists from across the world to celebrate and present art,
to start new conversations, to bring new ideas to break bread
with new friends and make new exciting partnerships.
As someone who has lived in Colchester for 25 years at times
I feel like the new boy. But I’ve also fallen in love with our town,
with its quirks and its foibles, its streets and cafes, its Roman wall
and The Hole In The Wall boozer too. From a little office, behind
leaded light glass in the old church of St Mary’s At The Walls,
now the home of Colchester Arts Centre (Never Knowingly
Understood) I’ve witnessed the arts change and evolve, fashions
change, opportunities missed and opportunities grasped. The one
thing that has always been the same is that it has never been the
same, it has never stood still. Our currency, the currency of the
creative communities is ideas. Without ideas there would never be
the buildings, the spaces, the art. It is indeed fitting that one of the
tributes for James’ show is Kath Wood as it was her that gave us
the confidence to dare to dream.
photos: Mary Dodds

When you visit our gallery for James’ show you will see works that
reference his evolution from boat maker to artist and his growth
and humanity as an artist. From intricate linocuts and his unique
panoramic scenes to larger than life encyclopaedic paintings like an
abc of boats. But as with the river, there is always a future tide and
it is the sense of excitement for the future which sits within this
exhibition and within this building that delights my soul. I feel we
are still at the very beginning of a story. A story that will involve
a cast of literally thousands of people over many generations to
come. Who will one day be blowing the dust of this very book
in an attic in Barrack Street in 2315. Who will be looking back on
over two hundred years of art, of exhibitions, of fierce debate,
of challenge, tears, generosity, great successes, woeful flops, great
characters, intrigue, fun and life.
I think of this gallery as our generations gift to our future
generations. That we will be able to allow them to see some of
the greatest artists and works in the history of the world here in
Colchester. Works by Constable, Warhol, Debenham and Dodds
and works by great world breaking artists that aren’t even born
yet. Here’s an invitation for my reader in the attic in 2315 to fill in
the blanks.
This building and this project will be alive for two hundred merry
years to come. The waters ahead may not be calm, the seas may
yet be choppy and the tides of change will flow this way and that.
As this exhibition casts off and sets her on the journey we sing
God bless her and all who sail in her.
Anthony Roberts
Interim Managing Director
Firstsite

Ia n Collins
This is the story of a journey – the voyage out and the voyage
home and the ongoing exploration of history and experience
and imagination. The saga charts the continuing course of a man
who was born in Brightlingsea, grew up latterly in Colchester and
has long been based in Wivenhoe, a life lived as if following the
tidal flow of the River Colne. It’s the tale of a youthful sailor and
boat-builder turned world-acclaimed painter of wooden boats
and portraitist of the communities that craft them and crew them.
It’s about tradition and conservation, survival and revival, and how
the local can feed into the universal, as springs and streams and
rivers pour into the sea and veins and arteries form a network to
circulate a unique body with life. It’s about a former school pupil
stricken with undiagnosed dyslexia whose self-expression now
speaks to all of us. James Dodds effectively launched his career
as a national and international painter with a Firstsite show 14
years ago, and now – after the art has circumnavigated the planet
while the artist has remained close to his home port – he has reberthed
with a cargo of riches both familiar and revelatory.
If one painting sums up the ambition and philosophy of James
Dodds, it is surely the huge picture of the first Brightlingsea One
Design created especially for this show. There is an elemental
power about this knifed-on-and-scraped-off image which seems
almost archaeological – as if the vessel itself has been crushed
between immense geological forces to leave a fossil impression
in rough-textured rock. Such is the weight of personal and local
history within this one work. The first in the Brightlingsea One
Design fleet designed by Robert Stone in 1927 was restored by
the present owner Malcolm Goodwin (wooden boats are miracles
of maintenance as well as of making). The weathered planks on
which the image floats are panels from the artist’s family beach
hut. It was constructed by James’ maternal grandfather, Tim Foster,
after the original structure was washed away in the Great Flood
of 1953. The background black suggesting a close-run rescue from
a fire is in fact the remains of tarring for a felt roof protecting the
hut through decades of East Coast gales and preventing useful
timber from becoming matchwood and driftwood.
Tim Foster was an inter-war station-master at Brightlingsea, having
launched his railway career in 1901. His train journey was broken
by World War One and enlistment in the 5th Suffolk Regiment.
He took part in the Dardanelles Campaign – and, a century ago,
having given a graphic account of the Suvla Bay Landings to a
Times reporter, nearly lost his life to typhoid at Gallipoli. Family
legend insists that his brother Fred pulled him half-dead from a
marquee of corpses and delivered him to a field hospital. Later
he had seen service with Egypt State Railways – becoming the
first British station-master in Jerusalem, and helping, in a race
against the Turks, to build the railway across the Sinai Desert to
Gaza. In the 1920s, during his Brightlingsea posting (others were
to follow across Essex), he became a British Legion-sponsored
town councillor – instigating the work-creation scheme that built
the promenade on the West Marsh (and secured paid work for
30 men for 107 weeks). His was to be the first hut on the new
prom (on railway land) – the parade of modest and much-loved
structures leading to an octagonal glassy building on Splash Point
that was his father-in-law’s former summer house.
William Pannell – Tim’s father-in-law and James’ great-grandfather
– could trace his roots through farming families on the Tendring
peninsula back to the 13th century. He married a Brightlingsea
girl and became the model of a Victorian entrepreneur in his
adopted town. He set up a grocery store supplying victuals for
yachts. He acquired a sprat-curing business and a sail-making
loft and chandlery and was appointed director of the Aldous

photo: Emily Harris

Andrew Dodds’ drawing introducing “The Archers” in the Radio Times,
1951.
Tim building the beach hut in 1953.
shipyard. He owned boats, built houses (James would live in one
of them with his young family) and, in 1898, donated the Hard
to the town which he also served as council chairman. He had a
good relationship with his left-wing son-in-law who himself died
in the year that James Dodds was born. Both forebears left large
imprints on his childhood – great-grandfather bequeathing a host
of local landmarks and grandfather Tim an untouched workshop
in his garden shed which the infant James likened to an alchemist’s
chamber.
East coast farmers have also abounded among James’ paternal clan
– but mostly north of the Scottish border. His late father Andrew
was born, in 1927, in the picturesque East Berwickshire village of
Gullane, where his parents ran the local dairy. Distant relatives
still farm in Fife. But when Andrew was only a few months old he
and seven siblings were taken south when his parents took over a
farm tenancy in Essex. Eventually his redoubtable and formidable
widowed grandmother would run a farm at Weeley. Andrew, who
went to art school very much against her wishes, became a noted
draughtsman and watercolourist. In drawings for the Radio Times
his mum became a model for Doris Archer, the original matriarch
of the long-running soap opera. James, the eldest of four children,
was altogether luckier in his parents. Mum Wendy had also
enjoyed an art training, and taught pottery. Creativity was wholly
encouraged in her home, though the infant James longed to be
out of doors and beside water – or, better yet, on it.
With that dyslexia ruling out formal academic studies, as a teenage
pupil at Stanway Secondary Modern School, James thrived only in
art and the practical subjects that the secondary school excelled
in once the family had moved to Colchester, to be learning how
to sail on two traditional Essex fishing vessels, a smack called
Shamrock and a small winklebrig belonging to family friends. There
were endless explorations of the small creeks around Tollesbury
and Goldhanger, and camping expeditions on Ray Island. They

during his apprenticeship, and for a time he lived with Andrew
who had become custodian of the National Trust’s Bourne Mill
– a relic of the early industrial revolution converted from an
Elizabethan fishing and hunting lodge (built from reused medieval
stone and Roman tiles). He rebuilt the waterwheel and dreamed
of graduating from shipwright to millwright. But instead, he became
a depicter of ships in paintings, drawings and prints – though the
first book he illustrated, in 1975, would be Hervey Benham’s Some
Essex Water Mills.
Early Morning Tide, Maldon (Linocut 2001. 45 x 54cm)
(100 years of Walter Cook & Son)
took part in smack races and even won the Oyster Race to the
old London fishmarket at Billingsgate. And when barely 14 James
landed the perfect weekend job as trainee mate on a Baltic trader
called Solvig – a charter boat owned by Janet and Charles Harker.
James came to know all the coastal estuaries from the Alde to the
Roach, and was soon criss-crossing the North Sea on voyages to
France and Holland. His nautical weekends linked with weekdays
when, at 15, he was hired as an apprentice boatbuilder by Walter
Cook & Son of Maldon. The yard rerigged, rebuilt and maintained
the flotilla of brown-sailed and black-timbered Thames barges
moored along Hythe Quay, while also constructing new lines in
traditional barges, smacks and winklebrigs. James’ parents parted
The switch from artisan to artist was very hard-won, and James
needed both singular determination and sympathetic support to
be taken on for the foundation course at Colchester art school.
Here – with the doughty will that would surely have impressed
even his anti-art grandmother – he prospered. Many years later
tutor William Packer wrote this telling portrait of the aspiring artist
of 1976: “Being so sure of his vocation as an artist, and knowing
so clearly just what kind of artist he was going to be – perhaps
already was – what he wanted from us in all humility was all that
we could give him, so long as it related directly and practically to
helping along his path.” Approaching painting as if he were building
a boat – breaking it down into a series of repeatable processes
and rules – he then needed to learn that instinct and imagination
had to be added to make a work of art. Evidently he learned
quickly for after a year he was accepted into the Chelsea School
of Art as an exceptional entry on the strength of his portfolio of
drawings and personal history. He left Colchester with a special
award for dedication, with which he bought a book on Picasso.
At Chelsea – where he studied alongside Mark Wallinger (winner
of the 2007 Prize) and under tutors Jack Smith and Ken Kiff –
James flourished also, by dint of that characteristic hard work and
thoughtful application. And when he turned up for his successful
interview for an MA course in the painting school of the Royal
College of Art he wore, despite the hot weather, a Guernsey
sweater under a jacket, thick trousers and steel-capped boots –

1984 Aldeburgh Festival, and a very persuasive salesman of his
own work, lived off the proceeds for the next year, then repeated
the pattern later. He was and is a model of enterprise and industry.
In 1986 this non-martyr to dyslexia bought himself his first printing
press – a Jardine treadle platen press from the 1890s, for which
he paid Colchester’s Holmwood House School £80. That’s how
the Jardine Press was born. And since then (also using a Victorian
Wharfedale press, and ultimately more modern machinery and
processes) he has produced a vast fleet of paintings, prints and
fine-edition books. His wife Catherine has long been Jardine’s inhouse
designer.
Springtide (2-colour wood and linocut 1990. 28 x 46cm)
(memories of working at Cook’s to accompany Kipling’s The Shipwright’s
Trade)
the uniform of the shipyard. During his extended art studies he
would experiment in various forms of figuration and abstraction
but, at least with hindsight, a ship-shaped destiny was never in
doubt. And, to top it all, an introductory lecture was given by
Richard Chopping, one of the wild men of Wivenhoe, close friend
of Francis Bacon and creator of cover designs for Ian Fleming’s
James Bond novels. Graham Crowley, then a visiting tutor and later
head of painting, would recall James vividly: “He arrived grounded
and complete – dancing to his own tune. His work had a rigour
about it, thanks to his history and intelligence. He knew exactly
what he wanted to do and no one else was working in the way he
did. I liked him a lot.”
When still an RCA student James embarked on a series of blackand-white
linocuts illustrating Peter Grimes – the savage poetic saga
of coastal Suffolk penned in 1810 by George Crabbe and scored
as a 1945 opera by Benjamin Britten. He hired a gallery for the
Over the years James and Catherine and their son Douglas and
daughter Mary have lived in Wivenhoe and then Brightlingsea
and finally back in Wivenhoe again. James has therefore had an
unrivalled vantage point for following the history of boat-building
on the River Colne – and he has even published a big book on
this pet subject. No wonder such a theme now forms the primary
part of this book and its attendant Firstsite exhibition, with a
secondary strand tracing the evolution of the indigenous shapes
of small inshore fishing boats all the way down the East Coast.
He says: “At one time there were seven large shipyards on the
Colne, with cargo ships coming from many far-flung ports. If you
travel down the river today you will be hard put to see any sign of
this industrious past.” Ironically, James’ latest studio is now built on
the site of one of the last yards, which he fought so hard to save.
Here, with a commanding view over and beyond the tidal river, he
can at least savour remnants of manual and mechanical labour: a
gravel works whose barges shipped load after load for the London
Olympics; glimpses of Wivenhoe’s last four working fishing boats;
tractors trailing seagulls. And his nearby house is next-door to the
very last Wivenhoe boat-builder.
A film Victoria Matthews made in 2002 follows the re-building
of the Victorian Essex smack Pioneer as a sail training vessel for a
trust based in Brightlingsea, and explores the last two yards on

hopefully, something of the human spirit also. It’s about using head
(idea), heart (feelings) and hand (skill) – a creative holy trinity. And
I do think that work is a form of prayer or meditation. I long for
those timeless out-of-body moments when everything is working
together.”
Winter Refit (Linocut 1992. 43 x 61cm)
(David Patient’s shipyard at Fullbridge, Maldon)
the Colne – both, scenes of dereliction then, are filled with smart
housing schemes now. And a recent Shaped by the Sea film, made
by Emily Harris and viewable on YouTube, traces James’ past and
his ongoing passion for practical and beautiful working boats
built by the eye and by rule of thumb, suited to local need, sea
conditions and available construction materials.
While there is a strong narrative thread in the art of James Dodds,
during the voyage the means of expression has shifted from prose
and towards poetry. The vessel continues to sail from fact to
myth. And James adds: “What all my paintings are fundamentally
about is the balance between the known and the unknowable: the
boats with all my knowledge about how they are made matched
by the dialogue with the paint; using what skill I have to create a
piece of art that contains more than just the sum of its parts but,
With a reputation now enhanced by successful exhibitions on
both sides of the Atlantic, James was one of the few living artists
to feature in the 2013/14 blockbuster exhibition Masterpieces:
Art and East Anglia, at the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich, which
charted the saga of the eastern region in nearly 300 pictures and
objects drawn from the dawn of human time to date. His triptych
painting of a Cromer crabber floated comfortably between a
Turner storm scene at Great Yarmouth and modernist marvels
of construction and abstraction. The serenity of the vessel linked
powerfully, if more obliquely, to an ancient severed head and
fragment of a horse’s hock – the former hooked by an Edwardian
lad fishing from a river bank in what is now artist Maggi Hambling’s
Suffolk garden; the latter found in a drained field near Watton. The
metallic relics are fragments of a Roman imperial equestrian statue,
almost certainly dragged from the temple to the deified Augustus
in Colchester when England’s oldest recorded town was sacked
by Boudica and her Celtic army around 60 AD. The captured god
was then probably hacked into bits as the victors returned to their
home bases in north Norfolk, to rest before further battles. It
seems they paused en route to offer the pieces as votive offerings
to their myriad gods in the watery places (rivers, lakes, ponds,
bogs) they held to be sacred. It’s even possible that a final portion
– the horse’s head? – was flung into the sea near Cromer.
James Dodds is anchored in a tremendous tradition of local
artistry, as reflected both in collections and creations. There are
wonderful – and still very often little-known – holdings by the
Victor Batte-Lay Foundation, Colchester Borough Council, Essex
University and Colchester Art Society. He notes that Wivenhoe
Park, now the university’s home, inspired an especially fine John

Constable painting. On the edge of Constable and Gainsborough
country, Colchester is a centre of past and present creativity. The
art society has been presided over by the stellar likes of John
Nash and Cedric Morris. Lucian Pissarro stayed often in the town
– lodging with relatives at The Minories when the historic building
was a private house – and painted impressionistic studies along
the River Stour. Tiny Dedham still had space to host polar-opposite
painters Lucian Freud and Alfred Munnings at the same time.
A stream of Bohemian artists – from the Roberts Colquhoun
and MacBryde to Francis Bacon – has flowed into Wivenhoe as
drinking (and sparring) partners of late legends Richard Chopping
and Denis Wirth-Miller. James is a long-time friend and neighbour
of bird sculptor Guy Taplin and stained-glass artist and potter
Robina Jack, and part of a community of artists. There’s the wider
creative family, and then the actual one also – where creativity
runs deep indeed. Early in 2015 the new Sentinel Gallery in
Wivenhoe hosted a Dodds & Co show. It featured watercolours
and drawings by James’ late father, Andrew, pots and portrait
paintings by wife Catherine, constructions and a first book to
be published by student son Douglas, photographs and films
by daughter Mary, photographs by mum Wendy and poems by
step-father Bryan Thomas. Plus, of course, paintings and prints and
Jardine Press books by James himself.
Artists are unique and also part of a broader picture. Back in 2007
James Dodds was awarded an honorary doctorate from Essex
University for his creative work as a painter and printmaker and
his service to the local community – having campaigned against
the loss of local boatyards and championed the rescue and revival
of vernacular wooden boats in his beautiful prints and paintings.
The boat-builder turned boat-depicter ended with a piece of
universal advice, garnered from his own singular life voyage. That
message now serves as a last word to readers of this book and
visitors to a landmark exhibition:
“However contradictory your experiences are, throw nothing
away. Use your rich diversity – it is a source of inspiration – hold
on to your own voice, use your own unique history, make your…
training serve your curiosity, make your achievements serve your
imagination.
“For me, reconnecting with my roots was my way of regaining my
balance and my true voice. I have always felt it is important to be
part of a community, part of the landscape. ‘No man is an island’,
to quote John Donne’s famous words. They are as relevant today
as they ever were. Whether we like it or not, we are all in the
same boat!”
Ian Collins is a writer and curator. His books include Tide Lines: The Life
and Art of James Dodds. Hailing from a family of Broadland boat-builders,
Ian has known James for most of his life.
Salthouse Triptych (Oil on linen 2008. 274 x 91cm)
right: Veruna Horn Timbers (Oil on linen 2015. 90 x 100cm)

Blueprint Boat (Woodcut 2000. 92 x 152cm)
Blue Boat (Oil on linen 2000. 122 x 244cm)
I painted this in response to being offered a one-man show at Firstsite at
The Minories and this was the beginning of the direction my work has
taken ever since. It was painted from memory, and is the kind of boat I
helped build as an apprentice in Maldon.
“Whether we are sailing people or not we are all aware of the enormous
symbolic, even mythical connotations of the boat, from the ship of fools to the
voyage of life, from the burning of boats to the carrier of hopes. Floating in
front of its dark background, the Blue Boat, small as a boat yet monumental
as an image, is open to all sorts of readings…
It permeates the whole of James’ oeuvre to date and a theme that
every viewer must pursue according to his or her own experience and
imagination…
Looking at it now, without sailors in it or waves around it, I cannot think of a
more impressive and convincing example of a shipwright actually building a
boat without leaving the painter’s studio.”
Thomas Puttfarken 2000

Looking Forward in an East Coast One Design (ECOD)
(Oil on linen 2004. 76 x 167cmm)
Designed by G U Laws in 1913, only ten were built, all by William King of
Burnham-on-Crouch. Gigi was design no. 9. I see them as miniatures of
the impressive J Class yachts which many of the local fishermen crewed
in the summer months.

Looking Aft in an East Coast One Design
(Oil on linen 2004. 76 x 167cmm)
When I did these paintings Gigi was being strengthened by having extra
steamed ribs put in.

Wivenhoe Past and Present (Linocut 1996. 370 x 695mm)
Wivenhoe One Design (WOD) (Oil on linen 2014. 80 x 110mm)
Designed for the river Colne by Dr Walter Radcliffe and adopted by
Wivenhoe Sailing Club in 1935. Only nineteen where ever built, and
sixteen can still be found at Wivenhoe. Restoration is now undertaken
by Wivenhoe’s only working boatbuilder Rob Malone. This is Rob’s own
WOD having the deck replaced.
Rowhedge also had their own One Design, the Firecrest designed by
Robert Stone and built by the Rowhedge Ironworks. The Firecrest was
also 15ft long .The name was inspired by an earlier yacht named Firecrest
built at the same yard by Peter Harris, that was sailed single-handed
around the world by Alain Gerbault. Firecrest number one is owned and
was restored by Peter Dilnot. He has loaned the boat to the Rowhedge
Heritage Trust so that she can once again be regularly sailed on the river
where she was built. Robert Stone also designed the 14ft Sprite Class
that was adopted by West Mersea Yacht Club as the West Mersea One
Design, and the Jewell Class in 1936 adopted by the Frinton and Walton
Yacht Club.

Wreck of a Baltic Trader I (Oil on linen 2012. 122 x 152cm)
Wreck of a Baltic Trader II (Oil on linen 2012. 122 x 137cm)
A series of wreck paintings taken from the wreck of I.P. Thorsø in a nearby
creek that I have wanted to paint for several years.
I developed this way of putting the paint on to show rusty iron work. I
refined the technique when painting the bare rusty ribs of the Cutty Sark
while she was being restored. Building the paint up, layer upon layer, with
a bricklayer’s pointing trowel finally gave me the means to paint these
wrecks. I made further improvements by making trowels of varying sizes.
This Baltic Trader is very similar to the boat I worked when 14 years old.

Cutty Sark Detail II (Oil on linen 2011. 96 x 122cm)
Cutty Sark Detail (Oil on linen 2011. 96 x 122cm)
Like most people of my generation I visited the Cutty Sark as a child. Its
towering masts and a hold of figureheads filled with me with awe and
the romance of sailing the seven seas. I visited her again shortly after the
fire when she was perhaps in her saddest state. But this was the best
time for me to see her unusual composite construction of wrought iron
frames and wooden planking. As a boatbuilder I wished she had been
rebuilt to go back to sea. This detail of the hull near the bow for me is all
about the textures of the rusted frames and tarry wooden planks.

Ju l ia Bl a c k b u r n
When I was busy with my book Threads, about the fisherman,
artist and chronic invalid John Craske, I began to get a sense
of what the sea means to people who work upon it, especially
fishermen who learn to trust their lives to a little boat, let loose in
the vastness of the ocean.
A traditional fishing boat, a crabber or a winklebrig, a coble or a
peapod, appears to be such a vulnerable shell of a thing and yet
the technique of its construction makes it able to face a Force 9
gale, or avoid being smashed to pieces just a few yards from the
shore, where the breaking waves are at their most fierce.
Talking to fishermen who are used to going out on the North Sea,
I was often surprised how much they reminded me of painters or
writers; they shared that same quality of abstracted concentration
which is part of the creative process, when you have to make
long and solitary journeys into the uncertainties of the unknown;
learning to let go of any sense of being in control and having faith
that you will reach your destination and eventually you will find
your way back to a place of safety.
I have admired James Dodds’ paintings for a long time. I have
watched how he moved from his early figurative work in which
human beings are seen battling with the elements or struggling
with the angels or devils of their own nature and into the
simpler and calmer waters of his more recent work, in which the
central image is a small and empty boat, the vessel that holds the
fisherman, that keeps him steady and protects him from harm.
Wood to Water (Ink on roof panel 2015. 130 x 144cm)
These boat paintings are wonderful. Like a surgeon who
understands the bone skeleton that holds a body together, so
Dodds knows his boats and how they are built, plank by plank,
rivet by rivet, every detail intrinsic to its strength and its survival
out at sea. His boats seem to float on an element that is neither
water, air or earth and they are illuminated with a mysterious light
such as you get just before a storm breaks and I think its these
two qualities that gives them the mysterious nature of apparitions.
They also have something that I can only call an inner calm, a
meditative quality which makes them good to stare at, until you
are lost within the act of contemplation.
Although I had often looked at the work and wondered at its
simple power, I first became aware of what one might call its
spiritual dimension when I went to the Salthouse exhibition
in 2008. For that show Dodds was commissioned to paint an
altarpiece for the church and he chose a Cromer crabber and
made it as a triptych. You see the quiet length of it, set against a
dark space of blackness turning into blue and although the boat is
brightly coloured, its colours are worn and faded, as if it has spent
many years battling with storms. And yet in spite of the struggle,
or maybe because of it, it has emerged and stands there as an
eloquent and simple metaphor for life and how we try to live it,
until we need to let go of it.
It seems odd that even though we live quite geographically close
and share a number of East Anglian friends, I did not meet James
and his wife Catherine until a few days ago. They arrived at my
house, their van filled with paintings which they carried in and
propped up against pieces of furniture, until the whole room
was enclosed. One of these big paintings showed the insides
of a winklebrig, vivid with the accuracy of detail; its intersecting
wooden structure like the ribs of some strange creature. Then

there was a classic floating apparition of a coble that seemed to
be drifting straight towards me, foreshortened by closeness, even
when I stood back to look at and a painted tryptich, similar to the
one I had admired at Salthouse. But for me, the most impressive
of all the works was a big wooden panel which was once part of
his grandfather’s beach house at Brightlingsea; the old pine stained
and tarred and battered, marked with all the scars of its long
life. Dodds had used the wood as a living surface into which he
cut the familiarity of a boat’s shape, so that it seemed as if it was
emerging like a new born thing, out of the energy and grain of the
wood. It made me think of a cave painting: something you might
stumble across, suddenly and unexpectedly, illuminated by the light
of a torch in an otherwise dark space.
The three of us sat around the table and talked and drank tea and
then James and Catherine packed up the paintings and drove away
in their van. After they had gone I realised the images of the boats
stayed with me, quiet presences on all sides which I could still look
at in my mind’s eye.
Julia Blackburn
September 2015
Red Boat (Wood cut 2013. 115 x 115cm)

Cromer Crabber (Woodcut 2013. 29 x 23cm)
This print accompanied the Salthouse Triptych in the “Masterpiece” exhibition at the Sainsbury Visual Arts Centre in Norwich.

Stern of a Crabber (Oil on linen 2014. 90 x 60cm)
Grey Crabber (Oil on linen 2014. 90 x 120cm)
Peering into one of the crabbers and whelkers being restored by Rescue
Wooden Boats at Stiffkey.

Bow of a New Crabber (Oil on linen 2014. 100 x 100cm)
New Wooden Crabber (Oil on linen 2014. 100 x 90cm)
This was a new wooden crabber being built by David Hewitt and
apprentice Tom Gathercole in the Hewitt Brothers’ boatyard in a former
army base in North Norfolk. The site also houses the charity “Rescue
Wooden Boats” that is dedicated to the restoration of the traditional
boats of the area and recording the history of the people involved with
them. The former army sheds are all lined with white-washed vertical
boards. I liked the contrast of these vibrant, parallel, cool vertical lines
against the warm horizontal curves of the new planks on the boat. This
painting is one of the first that I have painted with a background and
perhaps led me to view the wooden roof panels of our former beach
hut as a potential surface to paint on.

previous page: Number One (Oil on roof panel 2015. 130 x 335cm)
The first Brightlingsea One Design BOD – 18ft long designed by Robert
Stone (son of Douglas) in 1927 and restored by the present owner
Malcolm Goodwin – painted on the wooden roof panels of my family
beach hut, Number One.
Winklebrig “Breeze” (Oil on roof panel 2015. 130 x 169cm)
My boat; the kind of boat I learned to sail in and helped build as an
apprentice shipwright. I followed the building of this winklebrig, by Shaun
White for himself, and when I heard he was selling Breeze I had to buy
her. I have since painted her many times. This type of boat is derived
from a smack’s boat, a “bumkin”, a general work-boat used by fishermen.
The size varies from 15ft to 18ft and is usually built by eye. It is thought
that it was Hervey Benham who christened it as a winklebrig. I can just
remember an old West Mersea fisherman called Snowball who dredged
oysters in his winklebrig. Winklebrig racing is now very popular in West
Mersea and has become their unofficial town boat.

Falmouth Work Boat, Looking Back (Oil on linen 2013. 90 x 120cm)
Showing the transom removed ready to be replaced. This boat was recently rebuilt at St Osyth boatyard by Brian Kennell and Shaun White.

Falmouth Work Boat, Looking Forward (Oil on linen 2013. 90 x 120cm)
Showing the stem removed. Falmouth has kept the tradition of oyster dredging alive with a law that oysters can only be caught under sail.

For’ard 2 (Oil on linen 2007. 46 x 61cm)
Salcombe Yawl (Oil on linen 2011. 122 x 168cm)
The Salcombe Yawl, a 16ft sailing dinghy, is an example of a class boat that
has evolved from a fishing boat over many years. The present design was
settled upon in the late 1930s. The 1938 Morgan Giles -built yawl, Y15
Auburn, is said to have come to West Mersea during WW2 and used as
a tender and for fishing. After the war she was sailed from Brightlingsea.
Quite by coincidence there was a Stones boatyard (no relation) near
Salcombe that built the most of yawls.

The White Line
The white line of the blueprint, the white chalk line on the mould loft
floor and the white line of the wood and linocut. I love the vibrancy of
the blueprint with the thin purposeful white lines. For me the blueprint
smell evokes the excitement of the potential that plans have. I very much
enjoyed “The Art of the Engineer” exhibition at the Science Museum
when I was a student at Chelsea School of Art. It was a celebration of
the evolution of engineering drawing.
left: Detail from Robert Stone’s blueprint of a Firecrest, 1949
right: The mould loft at Aldous, c1925
The mould loft was a loft area with a large flat floor, often with limited
standing headroom. This was where a boat, to be built from a naval
architect’s drawing, was drawn out full-size on the floor. Sometimes the
floorboards were laid diagonally so they did not get confused with the
lines of the drawing.
It was a hallowed sort of place where you had to take your shoes off
and stoop under the low parts of the eves. The loftsman had the air of
a wise man, the fount of all knowledge, which of course he was as far as
the boat was concerned. In fact, the loftsman was usually the foreman in
a small yard.
The mould loft floor would be prepared with a black gesso, and a grid
drawn with a straight edge and chalk lines. The curved lines where made
by driving in nails and bending long straight wooden battens onto them.
The proof that the drawing was right was if the curved lines where fair.
This sometimes meant correcting the architect’s small scale drawings.
When the drawing was completed to the loftsman’s satisfaction he
would make moulds (templates) for the main structure of the boat with
all the bevels marked that the curved timber had to be cut to.
inserts: Lofting out the drawing of “Peace” onto plywood boards using
nails and battens

The mould loft at Aldous c 1925

Colchester Fishing Smack
This is the largest painting I have undertaken, measuring 20ft x 5ft. It
shows the smack Peace, first drawn up by Douglas Stone in 1909. Up
until this time smacks had been built by eye or from half models. I lofted
out the drawing – at half the size of a real smack – onto five plywood
boards so that I could bend battens around nails driven into the boards
in the traditional way. I superimposed the fore and aft body-plans onto
the midship section, which was sometimes done if space was limited.
It has been 40 years since I lofted out a boat. It was a Folkboat and I
was an apprentice at shipbuilding training school in Southampton. This
was the part of the course I enjoyed the most. Lofting out this painting
reminded me of this time; the concentration and accuracy required,
endlessly checking and rechecking measurements, then finally correcting
by eye.
The Priscilla was 31ft to the stern post along the waterline, built in 1893
by Douglas Stone, a few years before the Peace, which was built in 1909
and was 32ft 6in to the stern post. They were very similar. Douglas Stone
was a naval architect who trained at Harvey’s shipyard in Wivenhoe
above: Douglas Stone’s drawing, re-drawn
by Edgar March in 1953 from his book
“Inshore Craft of Britain” vol. 1
left: Rebuilding “Priscilla” at Harker’s Yard,
Brightlingsea 2015

efore setting up in Brightlingsea with his brothers, who also had a
shipyard in Erith, Kent. This was the first time a Colchester smack had
been drawn up by a naval architect.
The Priscilla is at present being rebuilt at Harker’s Yard in Brightlingsea
by the Pioneer Sailing Trust. They are finding Stone’s original drawings
invaluable with this rebuild. When finished, anyone with the right
experience will be able to hire the Priscilla and experience what it is like
to sail a traditional vessel from the 1890s. Another Brightlingsea smack
is being rebuilt at the moment at David Patient’s yard in Maldon, the
Varuna, built originally by Aldous in 1896.
Peace CK 171
The fishing register started in 1893. Colchester was the port of
registration for the river Colne with the prefix letters CK. The prefix is
usually the first and last letter of the “Port of Registration” for example
Harwich is HH and Ipswich is IH (I have not been able to find out why
Colchester is not CR). The prefix is followed by the number of the vessel.
The Colchester registration also covered the fishing fleets of Tollesbury,
West Mersea, Rowhedge and Wivenhoe, the largest number working
from Brightlingsea. In the 1890s Brightlingsea had a fleet of 52 large
smacks and according to D W Coller’s People’s History of Essex: “In 1861
there were about 200 smacks of 15 to 40 tons” . By 1898 Colchester’s
fishing register had recorded 487 vessels.

Colchester Fishing Smack (Pentaptych. Oil on board. 2015. 153 x 610cm)
Timepeace: Timelapse film about the making of this painting on YouTube
(search for timepeace James Dodds),

Pioneer
The Pioneer Sailing Trust started with the raising from the Mersea
mud the bones of one of the largest deep sea Essex smacks, by three
boatbuilders and smack enthusiasts. The excitement of the project to
rebuild the Pioneer snowballed, gathering like-minded people around her.
I first visited her about halfway through her rebuild and was swept up by
the project. My contribution was a series of linocuts and the publishing
of a book telling the Pioneer’s story. I later put these linocuts together
with the poet Martin Newell in a book called The Song of the Waterlily.
The poem begins with each part of the boat telling why it is the most
important. The poem continues with how the skills are learnt to make
the boat. In the final part the boat experiences her first storm at sea, and
all the parts of the ship sing together, which is the ethos behind a sailtraining
project: the value of working together.
Following the launch of the Pioneer the project has grown to have a
land base in Brightlingsea, Harkers Yard, training the next generation in
the traditional skills of seamanship and boatbuilding. At this time the
apprentices are employed maintaining the Pioneer, building the east coast
gigs (which have enthused new rowing clubs on our coast) and rebuilding
the Colchester smack Priscilla.
Pioneer at Sea (Linocut 2003. 54 x 75cm)

Gigs
Gig racing is fast becoming a very popular sport, with twelve boats
competing from seven rowing clubs on the river Colne. Harker’s
Yard now has their apprentices building these 24ft gig coldmoulded
from a jig made by Shaun White. They are a four-oared
version of the gigs that served the many yachts that frequented
the river Colne. A very early cold-moulded gig was built by Husk’s
in Wivenhoe for the steam yacht Venetia in 1905, featured in River
Colne Shipbuilders which I co-authored with John Collins.
Larger gigs further up the coast were used to ferry pilots out to
passing ships. Rival beach companies would race out and the first
to get to the ship secured the job. The pilots would navigate the
ship through the treacherous sand banks of the Thames Estuary.
The gigs are named after the large Colne smacks.
Pioneer Sailing Trust’s enthusiastic chairman Rupert Marks tells me
there have been fifteen built at Harker’s Yard to date with orders
for another year.
left: Pioneer Planking (Linocut 2003. 61 x 50cm)
below: Colne Gig Audacity (Oil on linen 2012. 89 x 150cm)

Rowhedge Ironworks, 1944
At the height of shipbuilding on the Colne there were eight shipyards. This picture was
one of many wonderful photographs that came to light when we put together River Colne
Shipbuilders (Jardine Press 2009). It shows an “Empire” class tanker which was one of the
medium-sized ships built. One of the largest vessels built on the river was Saint Angus,
60m long, completed in 1980 at Cook’s Shipyard in Wivenhoe.

Stuttle’s Shipyard, Colchester,1780s
Cook’s Shipyard, Wivenhoe, 1980s
Harris’s Yard c.1900, and
Rowhedge Ironworks 1940s

Sh ip y a r d s o n t h e r i v e r Co l n e
St Osyth Boatyard, present day
The Pearl. Built by Philip Sainty at Stuttle’s
Shipyard for the Marquis of Anglesey 1820
James & Stone, Brightlingsea, 1980s
Aldous (top right) 1930s

Selected Solo Exhibitions
1983:
“Icarus”, Minories, Colchester
1984, 1995, 1998, 2000:
Aldeburgh Festival
1985:
“Ship of Fools”, Hatton Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne
1986:
“Fish, Flesh or Fowl”, Christchurch Mansion, Ipswich
1989, 1990, 1995, 1997:
Printworks, Colchester
1989, 1992, 1995, 1999, 2009, 2014:
Bircham Contemporary Arts, Norfolk
1990, 1994, 1995:
Chappel Galleries, Essex
1992:
Sue Rankin Gallery, London. 2-man show with John Bratby RA
2001:
North House Gallery, Manningtree, with John Reay
“Blue Boat” Essex University Gallery
“Shipshape”, Firstsite at The Minories, Colchester, subsequently
toured at Whitstable, Herne Bay, Kent, Frome, the Isle of Wight, Barnard
Castle, National Maritime Museum Cornwall, National Maritime Museum
at Greenwich, Great Yarmouth and Hartlepool
2004, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2015:
Messum’s, Cork Street. London
2010, 2012:
Dowling Walsh Gallery, Rockland, Maine. USA
2013:
“Masterpieces, Art and East Anglia” Sainsbury Centre, Norwich
(mixed show)
Films
Beneath The Surface
Victoria Matthews 2002
https://player.vimeo.com/video/131644021
Artist at Work
Mary Dodds 2013
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6X9eotxHGCY
Shaped by the Sea
Emily Harris 2014
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBKEqGHxLU0

Jardine Press books
Tide Lines, Ian Collins 2011
River Colne Shipbuilders, John Collins & James Dodds 2009
Longshore Drift, Katrina Porteous 2005
Blue Lonnen, Katrina Porteous 2007
Wild Man of Orford, Allan Drummond 1995
Wild Man of Wivenhoe, Martin Newell 1997
The Song of the Waterlily, Martin Newell 2003
Black Shuck, Martin Newell 1999
The Green Children, Martin Newell 2015
ABC of Boat Bits, James Dodds 2000
Alphabet of Boats, James Dodds 1998
A-Z of Printmaking, Elly Robinson 2000
Knock John Ship, James Dodds 2001
Peter Grimes, George Crabbe 1984

James Dodds @ Firstsite features paintings of boats from the river Colne, and more broadly explores the
evolution of small inshore fishing boats of the East Coast. His linocuts put these vessels into the context
of the communities that have built them. James’ work celebrates the value of the area, offering an insight
into the spiritual and social role these small boats and waterside communities have in his heart.
The river flows, both cyclical and linear, always the same, always different.
James Dodds returns to Firstsite. It’s a homecoming, it’s a new beginning, it’s a beautiful exhibition.
Anthony Roberts
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 ot the skills of marine craftsmen.
Felix Dennis
These boat paintings are wonderful. . . Dodds knows his boats and how they are built,
plank by plank, rivet by rivet, every detail intrinsic to its strength and its survival out at sea.
Julia Blackburn