with Rosalind Lyons

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Artist

Rosalind Lyons has a successful career as an illustrator of children’s stories and academic publications, but it is her devotion to her Renaissance inspired figurative paintings that has, since the 1990s, led to regular exhibitions, winning her accolades from both galleries and the general public from, not only her native United Kingdom but also, around the world. The characters and their universes, created by Rosalind with her meticulous adornment and impeccable attention to detail, are treated with a style that appears to reside halfway between past and present, innovation and tradition, the obvious and the obliquely referential and the disturbingly and culturally unprecedented.

Rosalind’s portraits offer a fascinatingly unique and perfectly personal encounter, in which the weight of history is made light of and, in which the memories of a literary and historical past are intertwined with the painted gesture, giving rise to not only a revision of traditions but also experimentation. By combining legacy and innovation, imagination and reality and classical visions and futuristic visions, Rosalyn gives the viewer of her paintings the space in which to experience an alternative truth, that is subject to neither time or an expiration date. With a style that is strongly influenced and inspired by the aesthetics of Renaissance Italy, Elizabethan and Jacobean portraiture and 16th century Northern Europe, her work also reflects the theatrical traditions of William Shakespeare. Together – and individually – it offers a window to a reality full of characters, who, despite their unique individuality, resonate deeply with their universal archetypes.

During this interview you will come to understand how a graphic artist, with extensive experience in the world of publishing, found herself being kidnapped by the anachronistic and timeless meticulousness of the fine arts. You will discover how the exquisite ambiguity present within her work allows you to travel to other times, inviting you to be seduced by the mystery of an unknown, which is, at same time, deliciously familiar. Rosalind also tells us, ahead of her solo exhibition, ‘Shadows, Counterfeits & Familiars’ – held in October 2022 at the Fosse Gallery – about her working methods during the build up to showing her work, why literature is so closely linked to her creative process, how her fascination with Elizabethan theatrical lavishness led her to be the artist-in-residence at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London and how her work has come to be a bridge between the exquisitely anonymous and the inexorably public.

And now, enjoy the interview!

Watch Interview | Listen to Podcast
This interview was recorded on the 10th of May 2022 and released on the 15th of August 2024

Further Information:

Related Links
Rosalind Lyons: Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Etsy

References during the interview
Figurativism 00:46 | Illustration 00:59 | Renaissance Art 01:31 | Elizabethan Era 01:37 | Jacobean Era 01:39 | Shakespeare’s Plays 01:43 | William Shakespeare 02:05 | Sixth Form 03:09 | King Lear 03:25 | The Globe 03:44 | Kathryn Hunter 03:45 | Graphic Design 04:10 | Italian Renaissance 06:02 | Jan van Eyck 06:09 | Hans Memling 06:10 | Sandro Botticelli 06:26 | Andrea Mantegna 06:27 | Piero della Francesca 06:37 | Portraits of Federico da Montefeltro and Battista Sforza 06:48 | Diptych 06:53 | The Tudor Galleries 08:02 | The National Portrait Gallery 08:04 | Hans Holbein 08:14 | Tudor Art 08:18 | Oil Paint 09:30 | Acrylic paint 09:52 | Pentimento 10:50 | Radiography of paintings 11:19 | Caravaggio 12:28 | Black 13:00 | Venetian Masks 13:57 | The Birth of Venus 16:24 | Primavera 16:25 | Tapestry 16:30 | Henry VIII 16:40 | Dissolution of the Monasteries 16:46 | Fresco 17:24 | Easel 17:26 | PhD 22:39 | Androgyny 25:50 | Oberon 26:30 | Hamlet 26:32 | Gender on Shakespeare’s Stage 26:58 | Puritans 27:14 | Twelfth Night 28:02 | Artist in Residence 29:21 | William Lyons 29:34 | Auditorium 30:17 | Dress Rehearsal 30:22 | Props 30:26 | Tiring House 31:56 | Liminal 32:05 | Liminality 32:08 | Fairy Tale 35:28 | Composition 36:30 | Matthew Ball 37:53 | Charles Dickens 38:30 | Mick Herron 39:38 | John le Carré 39:53 | Art Model 41:08 | Stephen Greenblatt 42:43 | Shakespearean Negotiations: The circulation of social energy in Renaissance England 42:46 | Oscar Wilde 47:21 | Janet Arnold 50:01 | Jenny Tiramani 50:06 | Commedia dell’Arte 52:09 | Masque 52:24 | Elizabeth I 55:36 | Coat of Arms 56:38 | Puck 58:23 | A Midsummer Night’s Dream 58:33 | Oberon 58:34 | The Shakespearean Fool 01:01:58 | Grimms’ Fairy Tales 01:02:39 | The Fosse Gallery 01:03:34 | Stow-on-the Wold 01:03:35 | Abstract Expressionism 01:04:10

Selection of Works:

All images and videos used during the interview by kind permission of Rosalind Lyons.

Interview Credits:

Production by Carla Tofano & Toby Deveson | Subtitles & translations by Valentina Sarno & Alessandra Greco | Title music written and performed by Maya Petrovna

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