RobRoi Design

About RobRoi Design:

I have been a painter and designer since receiving my BFA in printmaking at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and an MFA in painting from Claremont Graduate University in California. 

Moving to New York in 1977 furthered my commitment to both the fine and the applied arts. Working at The Drawing Center, The American Crafts Museum and The Heller Gallery provided ample opportunities to immerse myself in both worlds, as did exhibiting my "Pattern Paintings" with Barbara Gladstone Gallery in NY and Bruno Bischofberger in Switzerland.

In 1983 I began a long and rewarding career as Director of Decorative Painting with Evergreene Architectural Arts in NYC. My fine arts background and passion for the decorative arts were a perfect marriage for the position that I held for 32 years. During my tenure, I designed and invented hundreds of decorative finishes, designed hand made wallpapers, led workshops, lectured, published articles and advised architects and interior designers around the country. 

Along the way, I began to work in clay.  For many years now, my ceramic studio practice has become an integral part of RobRoi Design, where the majority of my work features painting and mixed media work on paper.

My ceramics walk a thin line between the worlds of fine and applied art. As a ceramic artist and designer, I make functional vessels as well as sculpture that have strong surface patterns.

As a painter, I am concerned with more narrative, biographical material. With references to historic, botanic and multi-cultural patterning, layered with personal symbols and imagery, my work provides depth both visual and metaphorical. Pattern and it's disruption are often the scaffolding beneath the narratives of my mixed media works on paper.

My long-standing passion for pattern, in nature, human nature and in the man-made world continues to provide inspiration for both my 2D and 3D work.