A Man's A Man For A' That,
Peter Bevan

Cow'rin! Tim'rous!,
Peter Bevan

Fickle Fortune,
Peter Bevan

Gone to the West Indies, RB,
Peter Bevan

Poor Mailie's last words,
Peter Bevan

Study for 'Handsome Nell',
Peter Bevan

Study for 'O Tibbie, I care't na by',
Peter Bevan

Tam Samson's Elegy,
Peter Bevan

The Belles of Mauchline,
Peter Bevan

The Jolly Beggars,
Peter Bevan

The Tarbolton Lassies,
Peter Bevan

The Twa Dogs,
Peter Bevan

Tirlin the Kirks,
Peter Bevan

Wae worth thy power, thy cursed leaf!,
Peter Bevan

Peter Bevan

'As someone who survived a typically English education, I knew nothing of Robert Burns until 1973, when I came to live and work in Scotland. Even then, it was more than 10 years later, after being asked to make some drawings based on his work that I first personally, read any of his poems. Reading the ‘Complete Works’ was indeed a revelation in terms of the enormous range of ideas and issues to which Burns refers over the course of his life, which in his early pecuniary and parochial circumstances, could only result from a determined and life-long self-education through books, pamphlets, newspapers and (despite his avuncular preference for the ‘lower classes’), the cultivation of ‘cultured’ acquaintances. These issues include an anti-Calvinistic and liberal attitude to religion, the desperate plight of the poor and hypocrisy of the upper classes; contemporary British politics and the ‘English’ monarchy, the importance of the French Revolution and Independence of the American Colonies, and the inequities of Slavery. Most of his poems and songs however, draw directly from personal experience, and of course, many are concerned with the passion and love for the female sex, whether requited or not. But poems also reveal the depth of Burn’s intermittent financial and emotional depressions as well as the heights of artistic and social success. However, it is an irrepressible humour, which resonates throughout the varied subjects of the poems, whether devilish or benign, satirical, bawdy or worse, or simply comical. (I’m sure he would have been [and maybe was!] a great stand-up comic). It is important to me that all of these aspects of Burn’s work are represented in my drawings, because, having become familiar with some of the Scottish vernacular, I feel they have contemporary resonance. But also, to acknowledge what a revelation they were to me and hopefully, may be, to viewers unfamiliar with the great breadth of his passionate response to life, in all its aspects.' Peter Bevan 2008 Peter Bevan has taught extensively throughout his career in the UK and abroad in several Fine Art institutions including Glasgow School of Art; Princes Drawing School, London; Toledo University, Ohio; Gujarat, India; and in Philadelphia. His work is held in many public and private collections in the UK, USA, India, Japan, China and Greece.