“I want my paintings to remain spatially indulgent and delicious, uncompromising and open to those who believe in the power of visual discovery.”
Danny Rolph is an abstract painter, recognised for paintings that are richly layered and led by colour. He makes them on Triplewall, a translucent industrial polycarbonate, using acrylic, and on canvas. Born in Islington in 1967, he studied at Winchester School of Art and took his MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art, and in 1998 he was Rome Scholar at the British School at Rome.
Danny’s colour evolves instinctively, often echoing the environment around him, and the work continually questions surface tension and spatial relation, holding joy, doubt and discovery together in the making.colour evolves instinctively, often echoing the environment around him, and the work continually questions surface tension and spatial relation, holding joy, doubt and discovery together in the making.
His work is held in major collections, among them the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which acquired an early painting in 1994, Tate, the High Lanes Museum in Drogheda, and the National Gallery of Iceland, as well as the collections of Goldman Sachs, Time Warner and the Duke and Duchess of Westminster. He has exhibited internationally for three decades, showing regularly at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and in the John Moores Painting Prize, with solo exhibitions in Houston, New York and Basel, Milan, Mallorca and London. A monograph, Happenstance, was published in 2007.
Teaching has run in parallel with his own painting for thirty years. He has been a much admired tutor at the Royal Academy Schools for over a decade, has taught at the Royal College of Art, and is Visiting Professor in Fine Art at Bucks New University. Since 2023 he has been Chair of Abbey Awards, the body founded in 1926 that sends British and American painters to work at the British School at Rome, having served on its council for a decade before taking the chair.
What he brings to ESOP is a considered and humane way of teaching painting. He works from each artist’s own voice, holding technical development and a real grounding in art history together with the appetite for risk and doubt that ambitious work asks for. He recognises no hierarchy of subject or medium, treats material and meaning as inseparable, and understands a crit as the work of finding a painter’s strengths and building on them. His aim is not the skilled painter alone but the independent and resilient artist, prepared for a life in art beyond the course.
Danny Rolph (b. 1967, Islington, London) lives and works in London. BA Fine Art, Winchester School of Art; MA Painting, Royal College of Art. Rome Scholar, British School at Rome, 1998.
Selected Curriculum Vitae
Education
MA Painting, Royal College of Art, London
BA (Hons) Fine Art, Winchester School of Art
Awards and Residencies
Rome Scholar, British School at Rome, 1998
Mark Rothko Residency, Daugavpils, Latvia, 2022
Dow Residency, 2022
Teaching and Governance
Chair of Abbey Awards, British School at Rome, since 2023
Tutor, Royal Academy Schools
Tutor, Royal College of Art
Visiting Professor in Fine Art, Bucks New University
External Assessor, Bath Spa University and the University of East London
Former Students
Haroon Mirza (Silver Lion, Venice Biennale), Michael Armitage RA and Sikelela Owen RA
Selected Solo Exhibitions
Le Stagioni, 532 Gallery Thomas Jaeckel, Basel, 2025
Trippin’ Over the Ocean, Barbara Davis Gallery, Houston, 2025
Tercet, Museu de Pollença, Mallorca, 2024
Solo exhibitions with AR/Contemporary, Milan, and Hales Gallery, London, and over twenty years with Barbara Davis Gallery, Houston
Selected Group Exhibitions
Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London (invited, several years)
John Moores Painting Prize, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool
Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin
Collections
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Tate, London
High Lanes Museum, Drogheda, Ireland
National Gallery of Iceland, Reykjavík
Corporate and private collections including Goldman Sachs, Time Warner and the Duke and Duchess of Westminster
Representation
532 Gallery Thomas Jaeckel, New York and Basel; Barbara Davis Gallery, Houston; Aeroplastics, Belgium; Kaplan Projects, Mallorca
Publications
Happenstance, monograph, text by Martin Holman, 2007
For more of his work, visit dannyrolph.com