Image: Robin-Lee Hall RP, At studio

Award-winning portrait painter and Past President of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters,

RP Robin-Lee Hall’s Solo exhibition displays almost 30 of her works, (24 of which are egg tempera portraits and still life paintings, 2x etchings, one silverpoint portrait and 1 large charcoal drawing.); ranging from intensely observed characterful portraits, to colour infused still life paintings and intimate little landscapes.

Robin-Lee Hall RP, ‘Study of Joy’, charcoal on paper

Robin’s inspiration comes from the people who sit for her, the nostalgic objects either lent or given to her, traditional British cakes and confectionary, and the views out of her back-bedroom window.

She works almost exclusively in egg tempera, an ancient painting medium used by Botticelli and Leonardo da Vinci. Her paintings take time to develop, with many thin layers of colour. These layers create the unique luminosity you see in her work.

Robin-Lee Hall RP, ‘The Lemon and the Tiny Red Dinosaur’

“I was honoured to be invited by the Lightbox to have a solo show of my egg tempera work. The Lightbox is a little gem of a gallery over 3 floors on the banks of the Basingstoke canal in Woking, just a 20 minute train ride from London Waterloo. 

It has a reputation for well curated exhibitions, and in recent years has shown work by Turner, Lucian Freud, Damien Hirst and this year, Grayson Perry and Henry Moore.

My exhibition was expertly curated by the gallery’s curator Peter Hall and includes some of the objects, displayed in a print tray, that you will see in the still life paintings on show.

The exhibition brings together new and old work, spanning the 20 years I have worked in the medium. 

My still life paintings are about objects that interest me, old discarded colourful toys, traditional British cakes and slightly sinister ‘happy biscuits’. I often pair objects in unusual ways, for instance, in the ‘Lemon and the Tiny Red Dinosaur’, I liked the fact that the dinosaur, normally thought of as large, was tiny in comparison to the lovely knobbly Sicilian lemon I bought from Lidl’s.

My portraits in the show are not commissions, but people I have approached to paint. Often I know them well, and have drawn and painted them many times. Sometimes they’re strangers who become friends through painting them. I enjoy painting my sitters in hoods and headgear. I like the way the face is framed.

Some of the landscapes were painted during Lockdown, when we all looked out at the newly quiet world through windows. In ‘Sunrise Over the Allotments’, I would watch the winter sun rise and illuminate the greenhouse and plastic poly tunnels. It was a nugget of normality during an emotionally draining time.

The exhibition makes people smile, which is so nice.”
-Robin-Lee RP

Robin-Lee Hall RP, ‘Sadie in her Retro Parka’ & Print tray on show in the exhibition including some objects that can be found in Robin’s still life paintings.

When?
NOW – 17th November 2024