Duncan Mclean; Forward to catalogue for Scottish Gallery Show April 1994
It was 1974, and we were both in primary six at the school in Torphins. Along with a friend by thename of?Andrew Niven. I produced two or three issues of a comic called Condor, twenty-odd copies of which were photocopied and sold for tuppence each around the playground. Condor contained picture-strip stories about secret agents, star footballers and life in English public schools; there were also fake letters to the editor and invitations to join the Condor Club. What anyone gained from joining the Club is pretty vague to me now. I think it was probably pretty vague even then. But something I do remember is that Robbie Bushe was one of the few folk to hand over his fifteen pence, and in due course get his badge and membership card. The membership card had the secrets of the Condor Code written on the back of it: th cde cnsstd f drppng th vwls frm wrds.
Before very long, though, it became clear that Robbie wasn't content to be a member of somebody?else's club. Even less was he content to read somebody else's comic. Within a matter of weeks, as I remember it, he was selling his own photocopied publication at play times and dinner breaks. It was called Comet, and contained stories about secret agents, footballers and public schools....
Comet had one great advantage over Condor: Robbie could draw really well. My cartoons were limited by the fact that I could only draw people in profile; it also didn't help that characters tended to drastically alter their appearance from one frame to the next. But Robbie's people actually looked like people. He could draw them side on, face on, even from an angle! And his objects didn't need wee arrows and signs saying ìray-gunî to identify them, they actually looked like the ray-guns we saw around us everyday.
Soon after Comet appeared on the scene, Condor ceased production. We knew when we were beaten. Since then, I havecontinued to make up stories, but over the years they have come to consist of fewer pictures, and more and more words. Robbie has gone in the opposite direction, of course. I still try to fill my fiction with strong visual imagery, though I often see stories bursting to get out of Robbie's pictures. One reason that so much of his work sticks in the mind, is that it always suggests far more than just an arrangement of paint and ink on a small piece of canvas or paper: it's hard to remember sometimes that his characters have no existence outside the pictures they inhabit. It's hard not to immediately imagine whole past and futures lives for the characters as soon as you see them: the pictures are that crammed with the tension and humour and texture of everyday life.
I think that's something else that makes Robbie's work stick in my mind. His pictures haven't featured secret service exploits or jolly japes in the tuck room for a long number of years. Instead there is a world that looks very like the one around us, or at least, the world around Robbie. And I know I'm not alone in thinking it looks pretty much like the world around me too. In the late eighties there was a series of paintings of dish washing and vegetable chopping in steamy, scummy kitchens. A lot of folks were trying to make ends meet with such jobs at that time.In the early nineties there were a number of more domestic paintings: scenes in bedrooms and bathrooms, in pubs and at parties. Whether all the drinking going on in these pictures arose out of desperation or celebration on the part of the characters I don't know. Both probably. And who isn't familiar with that particular mix of feelings?
Now, in his most recent work, Robbie has moved on again. There are still occasional scenes of life in kitchens and cafes, living rooms and lounge bars, but more than ever before there is a large amount of outdoor work: paintings where people are viewed in a wider context. We don't just see folk at their work benches or in their beds now; we see them leave their houses, capering down country roads, standing by their ploughed parks, considering the trees and the water and the hills around them. The stories bursting to get out of these pictures are more complex and funnier and sadder than ever before. Maybe this deepening and broadening of Robbie's vision has something to do with him moving back to the North-East of Scotland after a long time away.
Maybe I'm biased, but these paintings of familiar fresh lands and familiar strange people seem to be the strongest work produced so far. And that's really saying something, for he's produced a hell of a lot of strong work. Right back to Comet in 1974.
Duncan McLean 1994
Novelist
