Robbie Fife
Robbie Fife’s paintings 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, an artistic residency in rural Ireland, and the work of naturalist Viktor Schauberger have all influenced his practice, resulting in gently surreal imagery that is rich in surface pattern and narrative.
Printmaking plays a role in Robbie’s artistic practice alongside painting. His latest monotypes, made with watercolour, continue to explore the artist’s interest in family members, neighbours, and wild animals found in his homeland of rural North Yorkshire. Snails, birds, rats, eggs, men in flat caps, and figures practicing martial arts - under the watchful gaze of flowers - all feature in these mystical images. 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. Recent exhibitions include Ghosts in Sunlight, Willoughby Gerrish with Rory Mitchell, Thirsk Hall Sculpture Garden (2024); Stage, LLE Projects at Kingsgate Project Space, London (2023) and A Quiet Settling on Earth, millimetre02 at Kingsgate Project Space, London (2021). Previous 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 twice 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 and 2025, solo exhibitions of new paintings were presented by Willoughby Gerrish, London. After living in south east London for many years, Robbie has now moved back to his hometown of Thirsk, Yorkshire.
We are looking forward to presenting a solo exhibition of new watercolour monotypes by Robbie from 21 November - 20 December 2025. Register your interest