Joseph Scrobb

of Scrobbesbyrigscīr

 

I am an artist, author and storyteller based in my home county of Shropshire, named Scrobbesbyrigscir in Old English. I was born in the shadow of the Wrekin, and a piece of my heart is hidden on the Ercall hill. My great passion is for the telling of stories, through words, images and objects. These are stories I discover in the landscape around me and in the folklore; the wondrous history of imagination, that inhabits it. 

 

My work encompasses a range of different media including illustration, painting, craft, performance, song, poetry and ritual magic, with an emphasis on traditional skills and techniques influenced by both ancient artforms and by art of the late 19th and early 20th century; the Pre-Raphaelites, the Arts and Crafts movement and the Symbolists. I paint primarily in watercolour, create artefacts from natural materials including wood and stone, and craft characterful dolls representing characters and beings from mythology and my own imagined worlds. I explore the strange otherworlds of British myth and superstition; realities populated by giants, fairies, pagan Gods and the funerary rites of woodland animals. Through these worlds I also find a language to describe my own personal experiences of Autism, mental illness and feelings of displacement and "otherness."

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