Dazzling STRIPES by Rozanne Bell

Dazzling STRIPES by Rozanne Bell

Dazzling stripes of colour are the focus of the latest collection of works from Artmarket favourite Rozanne Bell – and it’s exclusive to the UK’s leading independent gallery.

Rozanne’s fans – and there are plenty of them – are familiar with the artist’s rich and vibrant colour palette, much of it inspired by her childhood and young adulthood in Zimbabwe, where she was born.

STRIPES by Rozanne Bell


Thus far her repertoire has been depictions of animals and flowers, seascapes and landscapes – defiantly figurative if stylised, pieces

But Rozanne, who now lives and paints in Dorset, has always loved the abstract, so when Artmarket Gallery director Robert Power suggested to her that she might like to try her hand at a striped collection, she jumped at the chance: the result is STRIPES by Rozanne Bell.

“I just love abstracts – they’re my favourite thing to do,” she enthuses. “And they actually take a lot more skill to get right.

“With the stripes, for instance, I’ve tried to make it so that there’s no colour bleed between each stripe – it’s technically quite challenging.”

Of course, she’s not the first artist to explore colour and form through simple geometry – 60s artist Bridget Riley, a leading exponent of the Op Art movement, springs to mind, alongside, more recently, Gerhard Richter in the 90s; and archetypal Cool Britannia designer Paul Smith has virtually made a career out of them.

But Rozanne resisted the temptation to check back on their work when she started her new paintings.

Rozanne Bell the artist


“When it comes to paintings, I have a virtually photographic memory,” she says. “I have shelves and shelves of paintings stored in my head, so was immediately able to draw on the work of lots of artists. But I didn’t actually look at any again – I was very keen not to fall into the trap of copying.”

What she did take time to look at, though – and Bell collectors will know how much her African roots have inspired previous work – was the sarongs or kikoys woven and worn in Kenya.

“Those Kenyan fabrics are just amazing in their use of colour,” she says.” I did a lot of research into those.”

STRIPES by Rozanne Bell


The stripes collection is hugely decorative – each piece has a high gloss resin finish and is float mounted and framed in a contemporary minimalist black or white wooden frame. They range in size from a neat 45cm square to a more epic 93 cm square.

And like all of Rozanne’s work, each painting is a unique original: “I don't touch prints,” she says. “And I can’t recreate my own work – my colour palette changes every day, and that’s how I like it!”

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