Fragments to Fiction with Robbie Bushe RSA: Academician’s Masterclass

Join acclaimed Scottish artist Robbie Bushe RSA to create layered works that develop narratives through selection and recombination.

An Early Bird Discount is available for bookings made over 1 month prior to the start date!

Led by Robbie Bushe, this two-day masterclass explores the use of fragments and collage within contemporary drawing. We’ll begin by exploring Barbara Rae: Charting South at the RSA before extending our search into the National Galleries of Scotland. You’ll collect visual details from multiple artworks before editing, combining and transforming them into a single composition.

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The workshop begins with an introduction to Robbie Bushe’s sketchbooks and collage process, exploring approaches to fragment selection, editing and recombination. Looking at the collage work of artists like Dame Barbara Rae RSA and works at the National Galleries of Scotland, participants will gather a series of drawn fragments including figures, gestures, objects and compositional details, while considering narrative, structure and spatial relationships within artworks.

Using these collected fragments, you’ll then review and refine your material before developing a new composition through collage and redraw. The workshop encourages experimentation with structure, space and image-making, combining multiple visual sources to create an original work. The masterclass will conclude with a group discussion of the processes and outcomes developed across the two days.

Participants should bring a sketchbook, pencil, fine liner and eraser, along with a glue stick and scissors. Tracing paper is recommended, with optional materials such as coloured pencils.

We’re currently offering two Masterclasses with Robbie Bushe: Cut Away Edinburgh and Fragments to Fiction. To book both masterclasses in this series at a combined Early Bird Discount rate of £550, please contact info@royalscottishacademy.org and quote 'Combined Early Bird Discount - Robbie Bushe RSA Masterclasses' in your email. We will then be in touch to arrange payment.

About Robbie Bushe RSA

Robbie Bushe RSA’s practice centres on the depiction of detailed, suggestive narratives, frequently set within expansive architectonic constructions.

‘These masterclasses are rooted directly in my painting practice. My work brings together narrative, structure and invention through images that operate almost like staged worlds. They often contain multiple events happening at once, with figures, spaces, and actions unfolding across a single composition. Alongside this narrative drive, I use the device of the cutaway to open up buildings and civic structures, removing walls and exposing interiors so that inside and outside can be seen simultaneously. At the same time, much of the work begins in the sketchbook through the gathering of fragments, drawn observations, found imagery and collaged material which are edited, combined and transformed into new compositions. Drawing sits at the centre of this process as a way of thinking, testing, and constructing.’

Cutaway Edinburgh and Fragments to Fiction, Bushe’s two masterclasses, separate and focus his key approaches, cutaway construction and fragment-based composition, so that participants can understand how narrative paintings are built from observation, selection and invention.