Two years have passed since Roxana Halls became the youngest artist to stage a solo exhibition at Beaux Arts. Few people who saw that stunning show were left unmoved by what the art critic Brian Sewell describes as the passionate melancholy of her work.

Unhindered by formal art school training, Halls' work is alive with emotion, sometimes starkly and uncomfortably so, but more often appealing to the viewer on a more subtle, subconcious level. Her familiar objects of contemporary female mythology hint at subversion, and her new work is imbued with the haunting atmosphere of the old theatre in South London which she has made her studio.

The most astonishing feature of Roxana Hall's painting is the unflinching honesty which pervades her work. Fragments of her own life and experience give the paintings a dark, intense edge, an intimacy that is impossible to walk away from.

This latest body of work is a tribute to the remarkable technical masterly and maturity of an artist still in the spring of what promises to be a long and eminent career.

"In the National Portrait Gallery's annual exhibition of young painters' work I have for some years now always looked first for Roxana's offering. She has never won the prize that she so much deserves,but that has been the fault of the shallow judges who in haste have failed to recognise her discerning draughtsmanship and honest ability to paint, who have not read the eerie narratives behind the portraiture, who have been too dull-witted to share her passionate melancholy." 

-Brian Sewell

EXHIBITIONS

2002 Second Solo Exhibition, BEAUX ARTS - Bath

2001 Selected Summer Exhibition, BEAUX ARTS - Bath

2000 First Solo Exhibition, BEAUX ARTS - Bath
BP Portrait Award National Portrait Gallery, London.
20th Summer Exhibition, BEAUX ARTS - Bath

1999 The Hunting Art Prizes, Royal College of Art, London. The Royal Society of Portrait Painters, The Mall Galleries, London.

1998 B.P Portrait Award. National Portrait Gallery, London.
‘Nudes’ Innocent Fine Art, Bristol.
‘Still life’ Innocent Fine Art, Bristol.

1997 The Discerning Eye. The Mall Galleries, London.
1996 B.P Portrait Award. National Portrait Gallery , London.

1995 B.P Portrait Award. National Portrait Gallery , London.
The Royal Society of Portrait Painters , The Mall Galleries, London.

1994 B.P Portrait Award. National Portrait Gallery, London.

1992 Self Portrait. The White Lane Gallery ,Plymouth, Devon.

1991 ` Self Portrait. The White Lane Gallery , Plymouth, Devon.

1990 The South West Open. Plymouth City Museum & Art Gallery, Devon.

AWARDS

2001 Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant

COMMISSIONS

1996 Alan Grieve, Chairman, Jerwood Foundation Several Private Commissions / Sales.

SELECTED REVIEWS

1998 Brian Sewell, Evening Standard
1996 Linda Talbot, Hampstead and Highgate Express
Rosanna Negrotti, What’s On In London
Brian Sewell, Evening Standard
1995 Brian Sewell, Evening Standard