David Roberts

The Scottish painter David Roberts is one of those whose work I saw in the gallery and I have to say his work, of which I only saw one at the time, certainly captures the awe inspiring qualities of Egyptian architecture.

It would have been amazing to have seen this for the first time in person and by that I mean to walk about these temples and see the pyramids without the saturation of exposure we all know via the television. I find reality of sight sadly disappointing sometimes when it seems nothing more than another version of the image I saw on a browser or a documentary but back then he might have seen paintings or drawings but not even photographs. It would have been new to him, the sounds the colours, all new. We don't get that as much now. It's fine watching the world on television but it's always someone else's until you're there yourself. We should be awestruck when we see these places but the moment was lost because we've seen it and maybe we can't even point it out on a map but we know the colours, the bricks and we could describe it like we'd been staring at it our whole lives. It's a bit sad, I could tell you exactly what St. Basil's Cathedral looks like but I've never been, never seen it. I wouldn't be surprised by how it looks, not as I should because the place is mad.