Michelle Roberts

Michelle has drawn and painted throughout her life. As a young girl, she accompanied her grandfather, a watercolour painter who often worked outdoors. She has maintained this drive to make art, spending much of her free time drawing small, intricately worked images in her sketch books as well as ideas for the canvases she produces in the studio sometimes over many days and weeks.

In recent years Michelle has refined a dense and highly personalized approach to making images. Working methodically across each canvas, section by section, she creates colourful and complex worlds; each with a distinct logic and meaning that connect to her own life.

Michelle takes an active role in the studio project and supports others in their work through attention and encouragement. The evolution of her works takes weeks. Recent canvases have exploited the use of brush pens enabling her more control– building more and more layers and patterns of colour within shapes that she first draws and then fills in as in the painting ‘Sports’ which is partularly packed with detail.

Michelle attends a local day care provision, where she has the role of an “enabler”, assisting and supporting others in their activities. She independently pursues her art through other means and this year exhibited in Kentish Town Café, London, between May and July 2011.

Michelle’s mother says:

“It makes her feel very happy when she is painting and she has lots of ideas in her head trying to come out, she enjoys using lots of colours and pattern”.

“We cannot really put into words how this [project] has benefitted Michelle. It is the main way she has to express herself. This project has become a very necessary part of her life.”