Roxana Halls facts for kids

Roxana Halls (born 1974) is an English painter. She is known for her artworks that show women who are strong and don't always follow what people expect.

About Roxana Halls' Early Life

Halls was born in Plaistow, London in 1974. When she was young, she wanted to be an actress. This interest in acting and plays can be seen in many of her paintings. Halls often says that painting is like a performance. She works with her models to create scenes that look like they are from a play. This invites people who see her art to imagine the stories behind them.

Halls mostly taught herself how to paint. She took a basic art course at Plymouth College of Art and Design. But she found that she learned best on her own. When she moved to London, she "just painted, worked hard, went to the National Gallery constantly and did it that way." She set up her first art studio near an old theater in south London.

Roxana Halls' Art Career

Roxana Halls creates her paintings by looking at real life, remembering things, and using photographs. Her art explores ideas about gender, social class, and who we are. She gets ideas from many places, like famous artworks, philosophy, and even music. She also looks at things like old fashion and avant-garde movies.

Halls loves to research and collect things. She says she is like a magpie, drawn to beautiful items but also to old or discarded ones. She collects costumes from different countries and time periods, often finding them in thrift shops. She knows that the stories of the people who wore these clothes might never be known.

Her paintings often focus on the details of people's everyday lives. She makes beautiful still lifes or highlights fabrics and hair. Many of her works are small and show home scenes. They suggest that these everyday moments can tell us just as much about modern life as grand historical paintings. Her art often asks: How does society control how women behave? And how do women start to control themselves because of these expectations?

Exploring Themes in Her Art

Halls has created series like 'Shadow Play' and 'Suspended Women' (from 2012). These might remind some people of surrealism, an art style that uses dream-like images. However, Halls does not think her own work is surreal. Still, ideas like performance, theater, illusions, and magic appear often in her art.

In 2009, she had an exhibition called 'Roxana Halls’ Tingle-Tangle' at the National Theatre in London. For this show, she used the style of cabaret performances. Halls imagined herself as the leader of a group of performers. For one painting, Terina The Paper Tearer and Inferna The Human Torch, she acted as Inferna. She created this character after finding a special costume in a charity shop. While she used other performers for some works, painting herself has always been important to her. However, Halls says she rarely paints herself as just herself. She lets her paintings change as she works on them, instead of planning everything with drawings first. This matches her interest in showing women in changing or uncertain moments.

Halls has also looked at themes of eating and not eating, like in her 'Appetite' series (2013–14). In these paintings, women act in ways that are not expected. For example, one painting shows a woman eating popcorn messily with her mouth open. This might refer to an old artist, Elisabeth Vigée-LeBrun, who was unusual for showing her teeth in her self-portraits. Halls paints the teeth last in her own works.

Inspired by Artemisia Gentileschi and , Halls created Carvery in 2013. In this painting, a woman (Halls herself) takes on a role usually done by men. She holds tools, cutting out her own place in the world.

One of Halls' most famous series is 'Laughing While' (starting in 2012). These paintings show women doing things that challenge what is considered proper for women. These women are always active. They might break rules just by eating messily (like in Laughing While Eating Yoghurt, 2017) or by laughing out loud. In some of these pictures, the women's "bad" behavior becomes more serious. It can even make them seem dangerous to others or to themselves. They might leave someone at the altar, start fires, damage things, steal, or raid.

Notable Works and Recognition

In 2020, Halls was asked to paint Portrait of Katie Tomkins, Mortuary & Post Mortem Services Manager. This was part of a big art project in the UK during the Covid pandemic called Portraits for NHS Heroes.

Halls also painted portraits for Katherine Parkinson’s play Sitting. This play was filmed for BBC Four in 2021. Halls and Parkinson also talked about art in Halls' London studio for a BBC Radio 4 show.

Inspired by Artemisia Gentileschi’s Self-portrait as St. Catherine, Halls' exhibition 'Crime Spree' (2021) looks at the topic of women and crime.

Halls' art can be found in many private and public collections in the UK and other countries. She has had solo exhibitions in Bath, London, and Birmingham. Her work has also been shown in many group exhibitions in the UK and US. These include the BP Portrait Award at The National Portrait Gallery in London.

In 2004, Halls won the Villiers David Prize. This allowed her to visit Berlin and create her 'Cabaret' series. In 2010, she won the Founder’s Purchase Prize at the ING Discerning Eye show. Her painting of Scottish musician Horse McDonald was bought by the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in 2019. Halls painted Horse McDonald in a pose that captured her best after watching her perform her song "Careful."

In 2020, Halls helped start the InFems Art Collective. In 2022, she created her first NFT (a type of digital artwork) called "Pulse Points." This was part of a project with Carolina Herrera.

In 2022, Halls appeared on a BBC show called Extraordinary Portraits. She was asked to paint twin sisters who survived a crocodile attack. Also in 2022, her portrait of Katie Tomkins was bought by the Science Museum in London. This was part of their project to collect items related to COVID-19.

Halls was also asked to create the Stretching Room paintings for Disney's 2023 movie Haunted Mansion. These artworks are now kept in the Disney Archive.

Selected Works by Roxana Halls

• Beauty Queen (2014)
• Threesome II (Self-Portrait) (2018)
• Terina the Paper Tearer & Inferna the Human Torch (2009)
• Laughing While Eating Salad (2013)
• Girt & Ina van Elben's Tingel Tangel Machine (2007)
• Girl Table (2014)
• Laughing While Leaving
• A Little Light Reading (2012)
• Carvery (2013)
• Emma (2010)