Robert Oxley
Spring 2025

This new collection sees Robert Oxley opt for a palette of blue tones rather than his usual kaleidoscopes of colour. The artist experimented with different colours to paint this series of big cats but ultimately chose blue as he found it to have a calming influence. Finding that using just one colour streamlined his work, Oxley compared stripping back his palette to a musician going acoustic. Without his usual rainbow of colours, Oxley demonstrates his technique and presents his subjects in a new way.

Oxley found that his new palette allowed him to take a different approach to creating this collection. This time, he found the form of the animal first and added his signature drip effect later. Oxley always takes extra care when painting the eyes of his big cats, as it is this detail that inspires awe in the viewer. For this collection, he used a small selection of colours to add contrast and detail, introducing style and vibration into the animal. By utilising his drip technique and hallucinatory swirling lines, he creates a sense of life and movement.

During the process of painting this collection, Robert Oxley was inspired by the Bob Marley biopic ‘One Love’. He chose to name each of the paintings after a Marley song, aligning himself with the musician’s philosophy of using his art to enact positive change. Passionate about the conservation of big cats, Oxley uses his art to express his positivity surrounding the successes of the cause.

Oxley perfectly captures the power and fluid movement of big cats in his brush strokes. He confesses that his favourite artwork within this collection is ‘Stir it Up’, the tiger, as he loves the stripes and composition within the painting. “Whenever I feel lost, I return to the tiger. My heart and soul are in those paintings”, he says.

The caves of Lascaux – a large network of caves in France, home to cave paintings thought to be around 20,000 years old - were a large source of inspiration for this collection. Oxley talks of his fascination with the ancient cave paintings and how accurately they portray the animals and their movement despite their simplicity.

Oxley is not the only artist inspired by these cave paintings. Picasso, who also had a period of experimenting with blue, said “since Lascaux, we have invented nothing. We have learned nothing in twelve thousand years.” It is the candour of the cave paintings that makes them so captivating, and Oxley has perfectly instilled this feeling in his latest collection of big cat artworks.