I live in Bristol, UK, and work from Top Floor Studios, Spike Island, Bristol. 

You can contact me either using the contact form on this website, or email
maggieroyle@talktalk.net

Link to Axis - the online resource for contemporary art  

 

http://www.axisweb.org/seCVPG.aspx?ARTISTID=13730

View my work for sale on DegreeArt.com 

http://www.degreeart.com/newsite/artist_profile.php?id=317

 

 Link to Saatchi online

http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk

STATEMENT

'If you want to surprise yourself in painting, the obvious choice is to take things that you would normally not bother with and give them a try.'

 Albert Oehlen, interview with Jorg Heiser and Jan Verwoert, Frieze Magazine, October 2003

My paintings have developed from an interest in secondary characters that are depicted within Old Master paintings.  These peripheral figures often follow their own agenda, gently subverting the main events of the painting; characters absorbed in various kinds of activities are captured in a fleeting moment of narrative uncertainty.

When removed from their original setting and re-contextualized in a contemporary scene, the figures play a new role; this context tends to be a suggestion of a contemporary setting, for example, a waste-ground, or the view from a hotel window.   The insignificant character from the earlier painting is displaced to become the main protagonist in this new work.

The painting 'Some things we just do well enough - onlookers' appropriates bystanders from 'The Story of Patient Griselda' who become somewhat disdainful figures in front of Britney Spears' house; their poses suggestive of contemporary fashion models, are they are passing judgment on the suitability of Griselda/ Britney as a mother?

My recent work has seen a development of this premise; contemporary marginalised people are placed in an art historical context.  These peripheral characters become key players in a new, constructed narrative.  This reworking of an image offers scope for interpretations.  In the painting 'Raised on promises' the 'teen mom' finds herself in a landscape taken from a painting by Raphael; the woman who is often derided now has echoes of a Madonna in a Renaissance landscape.

The content of the work is important but within these parameters I am interested exploring the play between abstraction and figuration and in experimenting with the physicality and unpredictability of oil paint.   My work has something in common with figurative painters who appropriate secondary source material and whose work hovers between abstraction and figuration, for example Peter Doig and Wilhelm Sasnal.  Bonnard is influential in his constant reminder that painting is colour on a flat plane; his disquieting paintings evolving into a type of abstraction.


Source material

'Being good isn't always easy'     'The Entombment' 1500-01, Michelangelo, National Gallery, London


'Who knows which is which - after Cagnacci'     'Jacob Peeling the Rods' 1650, Guido Cagnacci, Royal Collection, London

'Ain't got no excuses'     'Netherlandish Proverbs' 1559, Pieter  Bruegel the Elder, Gemaldegalerie, Berlin


'I know I'll see your face again - Venus'     'Venus of Urbino' 1538, Titian
        Uffizi Gallery, Florence


'A hiding place where no one ever goes - Venus'            ditto



Untitled -'Scorn'    'An Allegory of Love II, (Scorn)'  1570s, Veronese,  National Gallery, London


'What you get is no tomorrow - onlookers'     'The Story of Patient Griselda, Part II' 1493-1500 by the Master of the Story of Griselda, National Gallery, London


'Some things we just do well enough - onlookers'        ditto




EDUCATION

2006 - 2008  Bath Spa University, MA Fine Art
1986 - 1990 Bristol Polytechnic  B.Ed (Hons) Art

RECENT GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2010     Fringe MK Painting Prize 2010 (catalogue)

2010     Spike Open Studios, Bristol

2009     6 @ The Octagon, Bath Fringe Festival, Bath

2009     Spike Open Studios, Bristol

2009     MA and other postgraduates, Atkinson Gallery, Millfield School, Somerset

2008    Bath Spa Masters of Fine Art degree show
2008    Bath Spa Masters Interim exhibition
            Spike Open, Spike Island Bristol
2007    Exeter Contemporary Open,  Exeter Phoenix
            Spike Open,  Spike Island Bristol
2005    'Sketch' Rabley Contemporary Drawing Centre, 77 Contemporary Art, London
             Spike Open 2005
             Gallery 58, Northampton
2004    Affordable Art Fair, London
             RWA 151st Autumn Exhibition
             Gallery 58, Northampton
             Waytemore Art Gallery, Bishops Stortford
              Spike Open      


COLLECTIONS

Bath School of Art and Design, Bath Spa University

PRIZES

2000 Royal West of England Academy, Bristol , 148th Autumn Exhibition - prizewinner