Much of my work is allegorical, almost all of it has a narrative content.  Until the mid 1990’s the majority of the pieces were three-dimensional in the form of box construction and assemblage.  They usually referenced the forest, not so much the natural landscape, but a metaphoric forest of the mind, a place where everyone find themselves wandering from time to time.
   
Since then my focus has shifted to drawing while my interest in allegory and the physical world as a place of curious realities remains the same.  I begin some of the drawings utilizing a technique similar to the “automatism” of the surrealists.  This involves allowing the pencil to move with no pre-conceived notion about what I will draw then actively completing it.  Other drawings are the result of ideas triggered by evocative images which I’ve collected from various sources over the years.  I allow those to suggest the image and then begin to draw.  As a result of these approaches the finished works appear much like scenes isolated from a story or a dream.

I was first inspired to create works of visual art by Joseph Cornell, Max Ernst, Hieronymus Bosch, Pieter Breughel the Elder, Renaissance and Gothic Paintings and much of the work by the Surrealists while employed briefly in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  Work in the Geology Department of a nearby Natural Science Museum, experiences as a sailor, and stays in Europe have provided much of the vocabulary for my work.  Book covers, which I sometimes draw on, provide a framework and set limits to the images in a way which I particularly like. Their surfaces often have a patina that influences decisions about what will be drawn.  In a subtle way these accumulated stains and textures suggest layers of history and enhance the image.

My work, overall, is meant to interest the eye and to suggest a narrative or depict an event or place that will continue to fascinate over time.  Whether the pieces are straightforward or fanciful, accessible or mysterious I, myself, especially enjoy the ones which I can view and explore but never fully comprehend.

James F. Watkinson,
April 2008