Jean Robinson
Biography
Jean Robinson was born and educated in Cardiff. She studied music and history in Nottingham, trained as a teacher and taught for many years. She has also run art workshops for talented children from local schools. After living in London and the USA with her husband and two sons, the family moved to Surrey in 1983. Her experimentation with paints and materials developed after joining classes run by Mike Bernard RI in 1987.
She has exhibited widely in the UK and abroad, including at the Royal Academy, Royal Society of British Artists, Royal Watercolour Society, Society of Women Artists, ING Discerning Eye and Affordable Art Fair. Her awards include the John Blockley Award, St Cuthbert’s Mill Award, James Hockey Award, Deborah Manifold Award and Richard Plincke RI Award.
Artist Statement
Jean Robinson paints mainly in a semi-abstract way, using watercolours, acrylics, inks and collage. Her paintings are intuitive rather than literal, emerging from remembered images and shapes, with colour often being the starting point. She draws on sights and sounds absorbed during travels to many different countries, while the coast, hills, towns and Welsh countryside also influence her work.
Robinson enjoys the feeling of not knowing how a painting will develop when she begins it. She gradually continues the work with the thought that it might become a landscape, harbour scene or townscape, or even remain as an abstract image. Music is an important influence on her painting. Bold and colourful pictures seem to grow when she listens to jazz and rock music, while more mellow paintings emerge with classical music.
Her work is driven by experimentation and a willingness to allow remembered places, shapes, colour and sound to guide the development of each painting, rather than following a predetermined image.