Although primarily self taught in figure and portrait painting, Robin Hicks attended a few small groups and some private lessons in oil and watercolour. She’s worked as an illustrator for the SA Museum, Adelaide University and private businesses over the years and has completed a number of commissions as well as solo and group exhibitions. Robin has developed a love of teaching and sharing her knowledge in watercolour and art in general and will soon teach portrait and figure drawing and painting.

Robin has received a number of awards over the past few years, including the Royal Adelaide Show Art Prize, Stationmaster’s Gallery, Clare Rotary, Peterborough Art Show, RSASA and others. She is currently a 2019 finalist in the RSASA portrait prize, exhibiting now.

Art of any kind can make us feel. Before the invention of the camera, all the world knew of history, was through art, because of art. The figures, the faces, the lives in landscapes, dwellings and situations told stories of relevance of times long past. It’s an essential part of our lives to connect our reason for being throughout time through historical scenes such as paintings as either portraits, figures or the surrounding areas and other things of that by-gone era. We do it without even thinking about it.

I feel that we connect deeply to the art as a portrait and the figure, because as beings it can open us to our own point of belonging and vulnerability as a being to the whole creative unconscious and essence of our humanity.

It is very relevant to gaze upon a beautiful face in our reality just as much as it is to do so as a painting of that beauty, capturing all the subtleties of light and mystery, or of that character hardened from a life of sorrow, the vulnerability in a child’s expression or of life continuing life through growth to birth, as it can be beauty and connectedness for the sake of it as is a powerful force within humanity in general, and we are surrounded by it.