about the artist

Text Box: Robin Riley Robin’s work is a celebration of far-away places. In the 1990’s, she left her New England home to fulfill a childhood dream to travel the oceans of the world in a small sailing boat. The impressions and experiences of her odyssey through the islands of the South Pacific inspired her to paint episodes of this extraordinary adventure. Each piece reflects the emotion generated by the artist’s intense feeling for the subject and tells a story, often of a personal encounter in a remote village, providing a glimpse of the culture and milieu of the peoples of the South Pacific. The recipient of numerous art awards from an early age, Robin chose to major in architecture at university and went on to practice in Boston. During her years as an architect she continued to paint, both in watercolors and oils, honing her skills through architectural renderings. In the 1990’s, to the astonishment of her friends, she surrendered a highly successful professional career to set out around the world in a small boat. “When I first learned to sail, though I was only nine, I dreamed that one day I would sail the South Pacific. Decades later, finally able to break away from my practice and move out of the rat race, I set out on a voyage both geographical and internal which would ultimately inspire my work to reach new levels.” It turned into a five-year voyage touching countless Pacific islands. Robin’s painting brings to life impressions of a remarkable region, embodying the spirit of a beautiful, rarely seen, part of our world, and its amazing peoples, destitute in material terms yet culturally and environmentally rich beyond the imagining of most city folk. To live aboard and navigate a small boat as it transits the oceans of the world tests painting plein air to extremes. Robin’s representational style evolved to meet the practical difficulties, encompassing a technique employing the transparency of watercolors to capture the vibrant tropical light, in the rugged and fast drying medium of acrylics. “To meet the challenge of painting on a small boat, I used color pencil sketches and watercolors to record impressions, then found studios where I could work with acrylics on canvas ashore, most recently in the Philippines and in Turkey.” The journey that would take Robin around the world began as she emerged from the Panama Canal with ten thousand miles of island-studded ocean between the Americas and Papua New Guinea ahead; the Pacific years were followed by periods in the Philippines, Malaysia, darkest Borneo, exotic Thailand, the stark deserts of the Arabian Peninsula, the horn of Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean. She found endless inspiration in these distant lands. While Robin’s paintings are not intended to form a series, there is a thread: the story of one person’s impressions of isolated, exceptional parts of the world.