Marcus Rees Roberts

Marcus Rees Roberts is a British artist whose work spans etching, drawing, painting and digital media, characterised by its exploration of memory, trauma, place and the narrative potential of imagery. Born in 1951, he studied at Cambridge before training at the Slade School of Fine Art, where he deepened his interest in the psychological dimensions of representation. His work often draws on literary and historical references, blending figuration and abstraction through layered, atmospheric mark-making.

Rees Roberts’s prints and drawings frequently incorporate shadowy figures, architectural fragments and ambiguous landscapes. These images evoke states of transition or dislocation, reflecting his longstanding interest in exile, personal and collective memory, and the traces left by human presence. His approach to etching in particular reveals a fascination with the expressive potential of surface: scraped, burnished and reworked plates yield depth and tonal subtlety that mirror the complexities of his subjects.

Travel and place play a central role in his practice. Extended periods in Spain and Greece have informed the Mediterranean sensibility of many works — a palette of earth tones, luminous light and weathered textures. Yet the work resists straightforward topography; instead, places become theatres for reflection, where memory and imagination intermingle.

Rees Roberts has exhibited widely in the UK and abroad, with notable shows at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and galleries specialising in contemporary print. His work is held in private and public collections, including university collections and major British print archives. In addition to his studio practice, he has had a long and respected career in arts education, eventually serving in leadership roles within art schools and contributing to discourse around contemporary drawing and print.

His work’s quiet power lies in its refusal of spectacle. Instead, Rees Roberts builds a world of poetic ambiguity — one shaped by history, introspection and the ongoing negotiation between image, memory and loss.