CURATORS: Dario Rutigliano and Melissa C Hilborn

 

 

". . . AH: Hello Roanne and welcome to ART Habens. Before starting to elaborate about your artistic production we would like start this interview with a couple of questions about your background. You have a solid formal training: you hold a and after having earned your Bachelor of Arts in Drawing and Painting, and after having earned your Post Graduate Diploma in Painting, you nurtured your education with a Master of Arts in Contemporary European Fine Art, that you received from the Winchester School of Art, in Barcelona: how did those formative years — as well as your 18 years of professional practice — influence your evolution as an artist?

 

R: That’s right. I took one of the most traditional routes. It was right for me at seveteen. I studied Drawing and Painting, at Edinburgh College of Art (ECA). It was founded in the 1760’s and followed the academic structure of The École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris and I wanted to learn fundamental skills and submerge myself in the history of the craft. We studied anatomy from life models and classic casts of Roman and Greek sculptures, head-life, drawing and painting techniques, and materials. Our Art Humanities, which included highly entertaining Tableau Vivant, was modelled after Gombrich, and stopped at “The Triumph of Modernism”. With this conservative teaching, contemporary art was disregarded, so I was sceptical of it. It took studying for my Masters in Contemporary European Fine Art in Barcelona to understand that the fundamental skills I learnt served me well in my practice but are not necessary for other art forms. I moved to Norway in 1999 and . . . "