Duncan M. Watt DA

Worked in the Olivetti studio of Mario Bellini in Milan.
National Engineering Laboratory - fluid power division.
Street furniture design and outdoor advertising - precinct advertising, Carnaby St, London for a Scottish company - Ross Chemicals. Various projects with Roche and, notably, designed blow-moulded plastic bottles which are still on the international market after 35 years — a design classic!

Duncan’s involvement with wildlife began when in 1961, at the age of twelve, he met George Waterston at Project Osprey at Loch Garten, when he filmed the Osprey’s nest on 8mm cine film.

He began performing his talk and paint shows in the early 1980s to audiences large and small for the RSPB, SOC, SWT etc. around Scotland.

He designed a range of gold and silver jewellery, especially featuring the Osprey with fish.

He has many sketchbooks filled with birds and other wildlife drawn thoughout the world. In the USA, he has drawn in Florida, Nevada, and made a 4,000 mile trip in the SW-USA where a highlights were the American Bison and Grizzly Bear at Yellowstone National Park.

In India, he drew Royal Bengal Tigers at Ranthambore and delighted in making fast sketches on a birding trip in Hong Kong. He has visited Kenya and Tanzania over seven safaris, and made drawings filling many sketchbooks.

Duncan has exhibited in Maastricht, Amsterdam, Aachen, Paris, Brussels and in the Holland Art fair in Den Haag, which led to his visiting Japan to show in the Japan International Artists’ Exhibition in Tokyo, where paintings of Zebra and Wildebeest on the Mara plains created great interest.
He worked with Singai Tanaka in a calligraphy workshop which was televised in the Netherlands.

He recently was filmed for BBC’s One Show, concerning a rescued Hedgehog from Uist which he released in his ‘ wilderness garden’, in collaboration with Hessilhead Wildlife Rescue Trust.

In his current art, focusing on the Hen Harriers of West Renfrew Heights, the Celtic symbolism of knotwork has developed from paintings of White-tailed Sea Eagle and Capercaillie into subtler and decorative forms unique to his oevre, wherein his use of runes creates an iconic quality.

His large sculptural installation at Culzean Country Park also has a runic element, but here another aspect of his art is coming to the fore – an aspect which he first showed in his mixed media work, Artist, Oryx, Light, exhibited at the Glasgow Art Club’s show at the House of an Art Lover, and then in Japan — the aspects of Tao and Zen.

Duncan is leader of North Ayrshire RSPB local group, Secretary of Ayrshire branch SOC and a member of the SOC Council.

Not only did Duncan show at the highly successful Art on the Wing exhibition at McLaurin Gallery at Rozelle in Ayr, but he packed the gallery to capacity when he delivered his personal view and critique of the art on view.

A jovial, often dramatic, speaker, Duncan Watt is something of a phenomenon — an artist who teaches. He taught art in a North Ayrshire secondary school for 30 years and still occasionally returns to lend his experience to the youth of today. In addition, during the last five years, Duncan has offered a very successful course under the auspices of Glasgow University’s Department of Adult and Continuing Education (DACE) entitled ‘ An Introduction to Ornithology’.