Rob Heasley is a South African born artist who immigrated to the UK over 20 years ago, currently living in the historical city of St Albans which is famous for it’s Roman history.
He’s an illustrator, animator and design leader with over 25 years experience working with some of the biggest brands including Dreamworks, Paramount, Universal Pictures, Microsoft, Cartoon Network and Chase Bank.
Travelling the London Underground everyday Rob would sketch portraits of commuters on the way to and from work. The crowded trains and bumpy journey helped form a gestural, organic line-work to his sketches – this is the source of inspiration for his abstract paintings.
Cropping a small section of these illustrations and scaling them up a thousand percent created dynamic shapes and textures. These tight crops are the starting points for his abstract paintings, choosing to paint in acrylic so he could work at speed, often using interesting objects for mark-making from pallet knives, sticks, plastering trowels, and rags.
He creates layer upon layer of interesting distressed textures, constantly adding and taking away – the final layer is the window to the past.
