Born in 1984, Rosa Roberts grew up in Norfolk on a fruit farm, and moved to London with her family in her teenage years, later studying Fine Art at Central St Martin's. She ran a business which designed and ran drawing workshops in London Museums for 8 years until deciding to go full-time as a painter in 2020.

My paintings usually start from observational sketching at home, in the studio, or outside in Nature. The large works tend to be the result many iterations of the initial sketches until I have settled on a final composition, colour way and materials.

I was in Bali just before lockdown and did a lot of sketch paintings while I was there, partly to calm my nerves at the rising chaos around the coronavirus situation. I have worked a lot from these balinese sketches and developed new compositions from the initial sketches many times and pushed my technique as far as I can to develop a new aesthetic in my work.

I have always been very inspired by travel and the tropics and long haul trips to hot places usually resulted in a lot of creative response from me. Plants, nature, tropical motifs and rich jewel colours have been constant themes in the last three years of painting. Bold gestural marks are almost always present.

My use of texture has developed greatly in this last period of intense creative work and my surfaces are now invariably built up with cardboard and collage. The crevices and gaps between the chunks that form the base of each painting are an important part of the work. I put a lot of work into the texture of the surfaces I work on, planning them out and building them up across days. Pattern, directional mark and layering are all important to my work and I'm always trying to capture the vibrance and beauty of 'alive things'. - Rosa Roberts

Rosa's work