Safekeeping

Robyn Rich

Oil on timber panel

14.7 x 21cm

2025

I first came across Robyn Rich’s incredibly detailed and technical work through the ACB Selects Group Show at Michael Reid, Northern Beaches in Sydney, and I’ve been drawn to her practice ever since.

Robyn is a miniature artist working in oils, and her paintings of eyes—small, intimate works on found and vintage objects like tins, spoons, and vessels—carry a remarkable sense of presence. There’s something very compelling about the way she invites you to slow down and really look.

I’m particularly interested in her connection to the history of Georgian Lover’s Eyes, and the way that translates into a contemporary practice centred on observation, anonymity, and intimacy all at once. Each piece feels like a quiet study in attention.

Her current project, THE SEEN, is especially powerful—around one hundred anonymous eyes painted on found objects from people all over the world. Numbered rather than named, they form a collective portrait built through looking. It’s an ambitious and thoughtful body of work, culminating in her first solo exhibition in the US at Hidell Brooks Gallery in Charlotte in 2027. 

Artsist Statement

I collect old tins and found vessels, objects that once held something else entirely. Cigarettes, pastilles, crayons. Their original contents are long gone, but the vessels remain, waiting. I paint eyes into them, giving them someone new to hold. Each one becomes a small act of safekeeping, a gaze nestled inside something that has outlived its original purpose and found another. This painting gathers them together in the dark, quiet and held. A collection of collections. Objects that have carried things across time, now carrying something far more intimate, the steady, patient act of being seen.

We will contact you with shipping details once purchased. (Shipping will be approximately $20 Australia and $50 Worldwide.)

To purchase this work please contact Harriet Links through her website.