Robert Holyhead

Who is Robert Holyhead?

Robert Holyhead is a British abstract artist. He studied painting at Manchester School of Art and completed his MA at Chelsea School of Art in 1997.

Holyhead’s work is marked by expanses of white ground left uncovered with traces of colour at the canvas-edge where paint has been carefully removed from the surface. Whilst some pieces are covered almost entirely with semi-translucent paint others are, in contrast, sporadically punctured by intensely coloured, geometric shapes.

In 2005 he was awarded a five-year live/work residency at Acme Fire Station and in 2007 he was invited to spend three months in Switzerland on a residency with Fundaziun NAIRS. In 2009 he had a solo exhibition at Karsten Schubert and was included in The Painting Edition of the East End Academy at the Whitechapel Gallery, London.

He is a senior lecturer in Fine Art at Anglia Ruskin University.