Robbie Fife
Robbie Fife’s intimate, small-scale works feature an intriguing array of subjects including toy-like towers that become rockets, mysterious figures, and sharks. A course in Indian miniature painting, the architecture of the Spanish landscape, and an artistic residency rural Ireland have all profoundly influenced his practice resulting in gently surreal works that are rich in surface pattern and narrative.
Robbie’s practice has recently expanded to include printmaking. Made in London and Cornwall, his painterly monotypes and limited edition prints continue to explore the idea of above and below, imagining worlds that exist under the surface of rural or planetary landscapes. Sticks, roots, black boxes, iceberg bellies, and rickety ferris wheels all appear as phenomena that could have been abandoned or buried. The characterful otherworldly protagonists that inhabit Robbie’s images are often inspired by family members or neighbours from the artist’s childhood in rural Yorkshire. For Robbie, printmaking ‘offers a different way to arrive at an image. There is an immediacy that I don’t find in my painting; fewer opportunities to agonise’.
Robbie graduated with an MFA in painting from The Slade School of Fine Art in 2014. He has exhibited widely in the UK. Exhibitions include Nightswimming, LLE at Mission Gallery, Swansea, (2018); Sightseers, g39, Cardiff, (2018); and a solo show at May Project, Brook Green, in London, (2016). He was artist-in-residence at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation in Connecticut, USA in November/December 2015 and Carraig-na-gcat, Ireland in September 2019. In 2021 Oliver Projects presented a solo exhibition of paintings and monotypes at 155A Gallery, London and in the same year exhibited new monotypes at The Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair. In 2022 a solo exhibition of new paintings was presented by Willoughby Gerrish, London. Robbie has recently re-located from London back to his home town of Thirsk, Yorkshire.
Robbie Fife’s intimate, small-scale works feature an intriguing array of subjects including toy-like towers that become rockets, mysterious figures, and sharks. A course in Indian miniature painting, the architecture of the Spanish landscape, and an artistic residency rural Ireland have all profoundly influenced his practice resulting in gently surreal works that are rich in surface pattern and narrative.
Robbie’s practice has recently expanded to include printmaking. Made in London and Cornwall, his painterly monotypes and limited edition prints continue to explore the idea of above and below, imagining worlds that exist under the surface of rural or planetary landscapes. Sticks, roots, black boxes, iceberg bellies, and rickety ferris wheels all appear as phenomena that could have been abandoned or buried. The characterful otherworldly protagonists that inhabit Robbie’s images are often inspired by family members or neighbours from the artist’s childhood in rural Yorkshire. For Robbie, printmaking ‘offers a different way to arrive at an image. There is an immediacy that I don’t find in my painting; fewer opportunities to agonise’.
Robbie graduated with an MFA in painting from The Slade School of Fine Art in 2014. He has exhibited widely in the UK. Exhibitions include Nightswimming, LLE at Mission Gallery, Swansea, (2018); Sightseers, g39, Cardiff, (2018); and a solo show at May Project, Brook Green, in London, (2016). He was artist-in-residence at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation in Connecticut, USA in November/December 2015 and Carraig-na-gcat, Ireland in September 2019. In 2021 Oliver Projects presented a solo exhibition of paintings and monotypes at 155A Gallery, London and in the same year exhibited new monotypes at The Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair. In 2022 a solo exhibition of new paintings was presented by Willoughby Gerrish, London. Robbie has recently re-located from London back to his home town of Thirsk, Yorkshire.
Robbie Fife’s intimate, small-scale works feature an intriguing array of subjects including toy-like towers that become rockets, mysterious figures, and sharks. A course in Indian miniature painting, the architecture of the Spanish landscape, and an artistic residency rural Ireland have all profoundly influenced his practice resulting in gently surreal works that are rich in surface pattern and narrative.
Robbie’s practice has recently expanded to include printmaking. Made in London and Cornwall, his painterly monotypes and limited edition prints continue to explore the idea of above and below, imagining worlds that exist under the surface of rural or planetary landscapes. Sticks, roots, black boxes, iceberg bellies, and rickety ferris wheels all appear as phenomena that could have been abandoned or buried. The characterful otherworldly protagonists that inhabit Robbie’s images are often inspired by family members or neighbours from the artist’s childhood in rural Yorkshire. For Robbie, printmaking ‘offers a different way to arrive at an image. There is an immediacy that I don’t find in my painting; fewer opportunities to agonise’.
Robbie graduated with an MFA in painting from The Slade School of Fine Art in 2014. He has exhibited widely in the UK. Exhibitions include Nightswimming, LLE at Mission Gallery, Swansea, (2018); Sightseers, g39, Cardiff, (2018); and a solo show at May Project, Brook Green, in London, (2016). He was artist-in-residence at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation in Connecticut, USA in November/December 2015 and Carraig-na-gcat, Ireland in September 2019. In 2021 Oliver Projects presented a solo exhibition of paintings and monotypes at 155A Gallery, London and in the same year exhibited new monotypes at The Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair. In 2022 a solo exhibition of new paintings was presented by Willoughby Gerrish, London. Robbie has recently re-located from London back to his home town of Thirsk, Yorkshire.
