Observation is critical to Iona's work as well as the way she naturally mines unconscious and archetypal aspects of her chosen subject. She is interested in the meeting of the conscious observational with the unconscious, and the way the seen world pulls forth the unseen and unknown so far from inside her – this allows Iona to articulate marks and image.
Iona initially walks and works in varying locations including remote landscapes. Often these places have challenging elemental conditions. Back in the studio, she uses the accumulated surfaces and memories to develop them further. She enjoys synaesthesia, using her musical background to help her explore mark making and compose paintings. Recently she has have been intrigued by accumulating a series to convey one narrative - the Soldiers Tale project she completed for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra (2020).
Iona has received a series of scholarships and opportunities and has been travelling, hiking and documenting experiences through locational drawing and painting. Iona has stayed at sites on the West and North coast of Scotland, capturing the shifting seasons and light. Alongside this, she has travelled to Italy, Bavaria, and Madrid. In Madrid, combined with documenting my experience of living in the city, Iona studied paintings at the Prado where she was creating her own visual code whilst responding to the historical artists work. Her sketchbooks and locational work in these variable sites have become a broad visual dictionary when she is composing images in the studio.
These residencies include Dumfries House (2024), Hafod Estate (2024), Cove Park (2022) , the Shetland Isles (2021) Royal Drawing School Dumfries House Residency (2019), the Iona Hostel Winter Artists residency (Jan. 2017), Royal Drawing School Pignano residency (Oct. 2017), and Richard Ford Award residency to Madrid at the Prado (Sept. 2017). Iona Roberts is a graduate of the Royal Drawing School Postgraduate Programme (2016), and Edinburgh College of Art in Painting (2015). In 2018 she had a solo exhibition with the Compass Gallery in Glasgow, and at the Edinburgh Art Fair with the Arusha Gallery.
She is now working towards another solo exhibition with the Compass Gallery and is also currently exhibiting with other Scottish Galleries whom have also offered her Solo Shows (The Kilmorack Gallery and Studio Two Six One, Newton Mearns).
Iona initially walks and works in varying locations including remote landscapes. Often these places have challenging elemental conditions. Back in the studio, she uses the accumulated surfaces and memories to develop them further. She enjoys synaesthesia, using her musical background to help her explore mark making and compose paintings. Recently she has have been intrigued by accumulating a series to convey one narrative - the Soldiers Tale project she completed for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra (2020).
Iona has received a series of scholarships and opportunities and has been travelling, hiking and documenting experiences through locational drawing and painting. Iona has stayed at sites on the West and North coast of Scotland, capturing the shifting seasons and light. Alongside this, she has travelled to Italy, Bavaria, and Madrid. In Madrid, combined with documenting my experience of living in the city, Iona studied paintings at the Prado where she was creating her own visual code whilst responding to the historical artists work. Her sketchbooks and locational work in these variable sites have become a broad visual dictionary when she is composing images in the studio.
These residencies include Dumfries House (2024), Hafod Estate (2024), Cove Park (2022) , the Shetland Isles (2021) Royal Drawing School Dumfries House Residency (2019), the Iona Hostel Winter Artists residency (Jan. 2017), Royal Drawing School Pignano residency (Oct. 2017), and Richard Ford Award residency to Madrid at the Prado (Sept. 2017). Iona Roberts is a graduate of the Royal Drawing School Postgraduate Programme (2016), and Edinburgh College of Art in Painting (2015). In 2018 she had a solo exhibition with the Compass Gallery in Glasgow, and at the Edinburgh Art Fair with the Arusha Gallery.
She is now working towards another solo exhibition with the Compass Gallery and is also currently exhibiting with other Scottish Galleries whom have also offered her Solo Shows (The Kilmorack Gallery and Studio Two Six One, Newton Mearns).
Like ourselves, landscapes are poetic and ever-changing: they grow, die, move from darkness to light. In response to the beauty of the natural world, Iona balances and controls components of form, space, light into her own harmonious and lyrical composition, just as a classical composer would balance articulation, harmony, dynamics, shape, tone and orchestration. This is how Iona works when in the studio. In her painting, she conveys her own musical space