Robin Smith

Robin is a painter who originally developed intricate, abstract paintings with interlocking geometric and organic coloured forms. Over the last few years Robin has focused on portraiture created out of bold abstract shapes, predominantly creating female portraits. Robin applies his intuitive painterly techniques by building up form and colour to shape the figure and background. Working on canvas and board, Robin combines acrylic, emulsion, pen and soft pastels to build intense, colour rich layers. Robin shifts between creating works that focus on a singular figure to paintings that have multiple figures woven together. He extensively reworks compositions and colour combinations, working across up to 15 paintings at a time.

The portrait subjects in his paintings originate from multiple sources, many are women Robin knows; his carers, ActionSpace staff, fellow artists, others he has imagined or inspired to capture from brief encounters. The stylised, full-face portraits saturated with vivid colour create bold, characterful figures, which are both individually fascinating and mesmerising as an assembled group.