Rose Wylie: Image Over Subject Matter

The Royal Academy of Arts in London is currently hosting the most extensive retrospective to date of British artist and Royal Academician, Rose Wylie. The exhibition runs until April 19th.

Celebrated for her bold figurative style, which draws inspiration from art history, ancient civilizations, literature, cinema, celebrity culture, current events, and her immediate surroundings, this exhibition features over ninety works. It includes her most renowned pieces alongside recent and previously unseen paintings and drawings.

As a painter of contemporary life, Wylie's works chronicle the eras she has experienced throughout her long career. Her art spans from her childhood experiences during the bombings of World War II to more everyday occurrences, such as a summer afternoon spent with friends.

Organized thematically, this anthology begins with poignant memories of her childhood, family life, and the WWII attacks on London, captured in canvases such as Rosemount and Wing Tips and Blue Doodlebugs. During the 1950s, while studying at the Folkestone and Dover School of Art in Kent, Wylie focused on anatomical drawing and figurative painting. After a hiatus to raise a family, she resumed her creative practice in the 1980s, establishing a studio in her Kent home, where she continues to work today.

The exhibition prominently features Room Project 2002-3, Wylie's first major series to gain significant critical acclaim. These works showcase the artist's keen ambition to produce large-format paintings that create an immersive and playful world, populated by cats, paper dolls, Olympic swimmers, and Wylie herself, often depicted wearing her favorite plaid skirt. Also included are several compositions on paper, notably Lower Teeth, Self-Portrait, from 2016.

For Wylie, drawing is fundamental, as evident in the 2002 painting Hand: Drawing as a Central Element, on loan from Ghent. She draws daily, building a vast visual memory bank. Over time, sometimes years later, a specific visual motif, distilled to its essence, finds its way onto a canvas, often juxtaposed with unexpected graphic elements or written words.

Several paintings from the Film Notes series are also brought together for this retrospective, highlighting Wylie's fascination with cinema. She is particularly intrigued by how the camera can zoom in for a close-up or capture different perspectives and angles within the same scene. Dramatic shots, alongside more mundane details, are imprinted on her memory and subsequently reinterpreted in works like Kill Bill (Film Notes) or Natural Born Killers, Long-shot (Film Notes). Newspapers and the internet serve as another source of inspiration, especially photographs that capture objects or individuals in the public eye, ranging from a Babylonian artifact to an actress on the red carpet. It is the visual impact of these reproduced images that commands her attention, rather than who they are or the stories they tell.

Other works delve into 21st-century information consumption through mediated imagery. Wylie also draws inspiration from her immediate surroundings: her home, filled with objects that hold personal significance; her garden with her cat, Pete; and the small community of neighbors around her. Everyday life is meticulously recorded as a visual diary.

The exhibition culminates with four large monochrome paintings of animals in shades of ginger, black, blue, and red. These were created by the artist painting directly onto the canvas with her hands, allowing the direct manipulation of the pigment to define the image with a visceral and tactile presence that reflects the energy and joy of her creation. While the subject matter is recognizable, it is this process of transforming a composition beyond conventional representation that holds true meaning for Wylie.