Robbie Fife, Planet Catcher, 2021
Monotype, 38 x 29.5cm (unframed)
Robbie Fife’s paintings and prints are carefully constructed, featuring an intriguing array of subjects including toy-like towers that become rockets, mysterious figures, and sharks. A course in Indian miniature painting, and the architecture of the Spanish landscape have profoundly influenced Robbie’s practice resulting in gently surreal works that are rich in surface pattern and narrative.
Recent imagery explores the idea of above and below, imagining worlds that exist under the surface. Sticks, roots, kists, the bellies of icebergs, fishing nets, and Greenland sharks all appear as phenomena that could have been left behind or buried. Often, otherworldly beings are the protagonists in Robbie’s imagery, further shaping his enigmatic narratives.
In 2021, Robbie began experimenting with the monotype process, resulting in a new body of unique prints on paper which continue to blend rural with planetary imagery. For the artist, ‘printmaking, particularly monotypes, 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 has used planets and moons in his paintings before but in this image he plays with the positioning and interaction of the forms on the picture plane, meaning that the scene looks more - in his words - ‘like a game of catch’.
Fife 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 @ Mission Gallery, Swansea, 2018; Sightseers, g39, Cardiff, 2018; Outhouse (solo), May Project, Brook Green, London, 2016. He has been an 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 Robbie’s work, ‘Kist’, in London, and exhibited monotypes at the Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair. Robbie has recently relocated from south east London to Yorkshire.
Monotype, 38 x 29.5cm (unframed)
Robbie Fife’s paintings and prints are carefully constructed, featuring an intriguing array of subjects including toy-like towers that become rockets, mysterious figures, and sharks. A course in Indian miniature painting, and the architecture of the Spanish landscape have profoundly influenced Robbie’s practice resulting in gently surreal works that are rich in surface pattern and narrative.
Recent imagery explores the idea of above and below, imagining worlds that exist under the surface. Sticks, roots, kists, the bellies of icebergs, fishing nets, and Greenland sharks all appear as phenomena that could have been left behind or buried. Often, otherworldly beings are the protagonists in Robbie’s imagery, further shaping his enigmatic narratives.
In 2021, Robbie began experimenting with the monotype process, resulting in a new body of unique prints on paper which continue to blend rural with planetary imagery. For the artist, ‘printmaking, particularly monotypes, 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 has used planets and moons in his paintings before but in this image he plays with the positioning and interaction of the forms on the picture plane, meaning that the scene looks more - in his words - ‘like a game of catch’.
Fife 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 @ Mission Gallery, Swansea, 2018; Sightseers, g39, Cardiff, 2018; Outhouse (solo), May Project, Brook Green, London, 2016. He has been an 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 Robbie’s work, ‘Kist’, in London, and exhibited monotypes at the Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair. Robbie has recently relocated from south east London to Yorkshire.
Monotype, 38 x 29.5cm (unframed)
Robbie Fife’s paintings and prints are carefully constructed, featuring an intriguing array of subjects including toy-like towers that become rockets, mysterious figures, and sharks. A course in Indian miniature painting, and the architecture of the Spanish landscape have profoundly influenced Robbie’s practice resulting in gently surreal works that are rich in surface pattern and narrative.
Recent imagery explores the idea of above and below, imagining worlds that exist under the surface. Sticks, roots, kists, the bellies of icebergs, fishing nets, and Greenland sharks all appear as phenomena that could have been left behind or buried. Often, otherworldly beings are the protagonists in Robbie’s imagery, further shaping his enigmatic narratives.
In 2021, Robbie began experimenting with the monotype process, resulting in a new body of unique prints on paper which continue to blend rural with planetary imagery. For the artist, ‘printmaking, particularly monotypes, 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 has used planets and moons in his paintings before but in this image he plays with the positioning and interaction of the forms on the picture plane, meaning that the scene looks more - in his words - ‘like a game of catch’.
Fife 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 @ Mission Gallery, Swansea, 2018; Sightseers, g39, Cardiff, 2018; Outhouse (solo), May Project, Brook Green, London, 2016. He has been an 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 Robbie’s work, ‘Kist’, in London, and exhibited monotypes at the Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair. Robbie has recently relocated from south east London to Yorkshire.
