Rose Wylie RA, born in 1934, is a prominent contemporary British artist who is celebrated for her drawings and large-scale paintings. Wylie paints with graphic simplicity and renders forms in a spontaneous style with verve and vigour. These forms are derived from a myriad of pop culture subjects, a visual language she revels in, and she will often include illegible or illogical writing.
In the 1950s Rose Wylie studied at Folkestone and Dover School of Art, Kent. In 1957 she married Roy Oxlade (1929-2014), also an artist, and initially she gave up painting to raise their children. Later in 1981, she gained her MA at the Royal College of Art, London. For the next decade or so Wylie worked in obscurity. In her seventies, Wylie won a number of prestigious art competitions and awards, enjoyed positive critical reviews and art world recognition then followed.
Wylie's unruly paintings depict scenes as if from a comic strip or story book. They are striking for their spontaneity, energy and freedom. The pictures seem crudely wrought not unlike the paintings of Jean-Michel Basquiat or Philip Guston. She creates colourful and exuberant compositions using a flattened perspective. Wylie draws on a diverse range of cultural inspirations such as film, television, fashion magazines, sport pull-outs, newspapers, literature, mythology and even individuals she meets in her daily life. Wylie's art is cartoonish and even childlike whilst simultaneously portraying a deep awareness of art history and painterly conventions. These sophisticated pictures are droll, humorous musings on the very nature of visual representation. Wylie's art most strongly communicates the rebellious possibility of simply seeing things differently. However the artist warns the viewer not to get too hung up on the references: "The painting isn't about something. I think lots of people don't understand that. They think it's the message, which it isn't. The message is the painting. The painting is the painting".
Wylie was one of seven finalists in the 2009 Threadneedle Prize. In 2010 Wylie represented Great Britain in 'Women To Watch' at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC. In 2011 she was awarded the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Prize for Visual Arts. In 2012 she had a retrospective at the Jerwood Gallery in Hastings, followed in 2013 by an exhibition at Tate Britain, London that featured recent works. She won the prestigious John Moores Painting Prize presented by the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool in 2014. In 2015 she was elected as a Senior Royal Academician and in June of the same year she won the Charles Wollaston Award for 'most distinguished work' in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. In 2018 she was awarded an OBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours List.
In recent years Wylie has exhibited extensively in the UK, Europe, Asia and the USA. Wylie's work is now found in prominent public collections worldwide including Tate Britain and the Royal College of Art, both in London; the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool; the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC; National Space K in Seoul; and Städtische Galerie Wolfsburg in Germany. The artist lives and works in Kent, England.