Annie Robinson

Annie Robinson, born in Belfast, the daughter of the legendary Markey Robinson. Annie spent her childhood traveling the Irish countryside with her father as he captured its charm including the activities of the people they observed. It is these paintings that have made Markey Robinson world-renowned.

At the age of twelve Annie Robinson immigrated to America with her mother and sister. It was a very different life to the life Annie remembered leaving behind in Ireland. After graduating Annie spent a period of time soul-searching which included returning to visit and travel throughout Ireland.

Annie’s instinct to express herself through her art came from a passion to record her own impressions of an ever changing Irish landscape and culture. Annie paints the landscape of Ireland which she knows so well from her travels on foot and bicycle. From Cushendun and the Glens of Antrim in the North, to the fishing coves and harbors of the south coast, the boglands, the Ring of Kerry, Annie Robinson paints the simple life of an Ireland that is now getting harder to find. She brings her own fresh bright palette to farmhouses, patchwork fields, fishing villages, and the country churches that grace her paintings. Her work is testimony to how fast our culture has changed, it is up to us to interpret for ourselves the memories it evokes within us.

For her landscapes Annie works solely from her imagination, drawing upon her childhood experience of a simpler rural Ireland, and for her floral still lifes she likes to have fresh flowers around her for inspiration. As well as her father, Annie names Van Gogh and Gauguin as influences and Dan O’Neill and Nora McGuiness as her favorite Irish Artists. Her works contain the same flat plains of un-modulated colour so characteristic of her father’s works, but in Annie’s works the sombre, muted earth tones of Markey are replaced with a more vivid, vibrant palette. Although both Markey and Annie share a nostalgic and idealistic view of rural Ireland, Markey’s landscapes have a sense of sadness and regret and a disconnection from the modern world whereas Annie’s works are a joyous celebration of rural Irish life, inviting the viewer to partake in that joy. This celebration of a simpler life is something that Annie finds very important in the current economic climate. As a way to combat the recession she recommends trading in the busy, stressful, urban life and in her own words “getting a cottage with chickens and a goat and cutting some peat”.

For Annie Robinson her father Markey’s presence remains with her.“In a strange way my father and I were drawn to life and art in similar ways. I think, the joy and romance of a moment of life, was the same for both of us, and that is what we try to communicate as artists.”