Barbara Janette Robertson was born on Thursday 16th August 1945, the only child of Margaret Lawrence Spalding (1902-1957) and James Fleming Robertson (1908-1969) of Woodside Inn, Burrelton. She died at her home in Douglastown near Forfar in Angus, Scotland on 31st July 2018. Barbara was an artist, printmaker and illustrator. Linocut was her chosen medium although she was equally adept with pen and ink and watercolour. She despised oil paint as being ‘like painting with mud’ and only a few examples exist of student work in this medium.
The purpose of this blog is to record her work in all its huge range and complexity and ultimately to build an archive of her prints from the earliest, which she began probably during her time as a student at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in Dundee to the last, completed shortly before her death. Over that period of 50+ years she produced an impressive body of work outstanding in its range and quality. As of today the exact number of her prints is uncertain but even if she produced only 5 editions per year (which is a conservative estimate) that would mean a total of 250 prints.
To understand the process of producing a linocut having many colours one can do no better than quote from Babs, writing in 1998. ‘My prints are linoleum cuts printed from one block using the reduction technique. The white of the image is the white of the paper and the colours are printed from light to dark cutting away the colour as it is printed. Completion of the print can take from 3 to 4 weeks, printing every day. The maximum number of prints in the edition is usually 20 and since the block is cut to pieces during the process the image is finite and unrepeatable. I also bite the block with a strong solution of caustic soda to obtain halftone and cloud effects’. [Its seems she later used Nitromors which could be applied more thinly and controllably. The lino was softened thereby allowing the surface to be scratched.]
This simplifies the process to some degree. She does not mention registration. Imagine lifting a piece of lino by its corners and placing it with precision onto an already printed image. [She grew her index finger nail longer so that the lino could be hooked.] It’s not so easy to describe as the printmaker is having to do many things at once. A slight mistake and a print may be ruined, that is, off register. Blurred. So imagine doing that 20 times for each of say, 10 colours and it becomes clear how much skill and dexterity it took to print an edition.
Barbara J Robertson 