Betty Ann Jordan: "Art Preview" Toronto Life Magazine. December 2003

Art Preview

Born an hour's drive from Loch Ness, Robertson was inspired to play with the mystery and legend of his homeland. For his high-concept exhibit Some Days Are Better Than Others (a reference to the perennially inclement weather of the Scottish lake), Robertson has generated deadpan mementoes of the lake's innocuous surface derived from live Web-cam images found on the Internet. Not by accident, his paintings look remarkably like the Loch Ness souvenir paintings that a family friend sold in his Loch-side gift shop. ("Why can't you paint like Sandy?" Robertson's parents had always asked him.) Other novelties in this tourist- and souvenir -themed show include the artist's assembly of "world's greatest" coffee mugs ("everyone can claim this mug as their own") and his limited-edition series of Pepsi Jesus statuettes, with hand-painted Pepsi-Cola red-and-blue robes. Robertson wryly thinks of these carbonated messiahs as souvenirs of the Second Coming, sponsored by you-know-who.

- Betty Ann Jordan