woodtowater

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