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Rosalind Roberts
Interview with the artist
Who is your own favourite artist?
There are so many artists that have inspired me, but I think I have probably learned more from the impressionists, namely Monet, than anyone else. Some contemporary artists also do a great deal for me, like Lucien Freud and Jack Vettriano.
What was the last exhibition you visited?
I visited the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition last year and hopefully will do so again this year. Might even submit something to it.
What is the best thing somebody could say about your art?
Oh, isn't that wonderful! I wonder if I can afford it?
Do you have an unusual 'day job'?
I have worked for the past 15 years in a cancer Institute translating medical writings for publication on international journals. I also teach English to first year nursing students at Milan University.
I am now writing a text book "English for Nurses and Midwifery" with two other teachers, which is taking up an awful lot of my time and means I have to paint well into the night.
Do you display your own art at home?
My paintings hang all over the place. Oils take about three months to dry so they hang around without frames during that period, then, after glossing, they need to dry again. Then they get taken to be framed and return to my walls until sold.
They are then replaced with something else.
What is your favourite subject and why?
I love to paint landscapes. But I'm passionate about painting the human figure.
Do you find art relaxing?
Painting landscapes is relaxing for me up to a point. When I get stuck and things start to look like a cabbage patch, I have to start all over and that isn't relaxing at all.
My figurative work is usually anything but relaxing. I'll attempt to capture a mood or light and that isn't easy. I end up being exhausted.
If you could pick just three colours to work with what would they be?
You can go a long way with the primaries blue, yellow and red but I would need white too so must do without one of the others, red I suppose it'll have to be!
What is your favourite media and why?
Oils. I've tried working in acrylics which would take away the long drying period of oil painting and the smell, but I just can't get the same effect as I can in oils.
If your artwork could be displayed anywhere in the world where would you choose?
MOMA. I visited it at the end of 2004 when it had reopened and my breath was taken away by the sheer beauty of the place.
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