GILL ROCCA

Gill Rocca is a London based artist recognised for her contemporary landscape paintings in oil.

Born in the north of England in 1971 she studied BA Fine Art at Leeds University and MA Fine Art at Winchester School of Art’s Studios in Barcelona, graduating with distinction in 1996.

Since then she has exhibited regularly in solo and group shows in the UK and internationally, most recently with a solo show in Hong Kong in December 2014. In 2016 her work was shown in ‘Imagined Landscapes’, a curated show of invited artists and Academicians at the Royal West of England Academy (RWA).

Her paintings have been selected for a number of UK art prizes including the Threadneedle Prize (2012, 2013, 2014), NOA (2013, 2014, 2016) and The Discerning Eye (2012) and are held in public and private collections worldwide.

The Near to Nowhere series of small oil paintings on wood was begun in 2014. These imagined landscapes, inspired by the realism of film and photography, feature anonymous yet familiar scenes. The scenes are always uninhabited, the glow of streetlights or road markings the only hint at human presence. Suggestive of an actual place, the paintings attempt to create a dreamlike tension between memory, reality and the imagination.