Anne Rothenstein b. 1949

Anne Rothenstein is a painter.

Rothenstein comes from a family of artists and grew up in the village of Great Bardfield, Essex, which was “a virtual community of artists in the 50s”, so there was little doubt that her path would be a creative one. As she states: “It was simply presumed that I would become an artist of some kind”. Born to Michael Rothenstein, artist and print-maker, and Duffy Ayres, a painter, her grandfather was William Rothenstein who ran the Royal College of Art and served as an official British war artist. Her uncle, John was a Director of the Tate Gallery, and her brother, Julian, is a designer and founder of the Redstone Press.

After a brief stint at art school in Camberwell in the 60s, Anne dropped out to pursue a career in acting. It was only during the 1980s, around the time she had her children, that Anne began to focus on  painting again. She says that when her children started attending school, “I really got going. But it’s only in the last few years, finally having serious time to myself to concentrate, that things have really taken off.”

Anne’s elegant illustrative paintings, executed in oil on wood panels, merge intricate patterning and fine details with single-colour block forms to create images that hover somewhere between minimalism and decadence. Speaking of her process, she tells us: “I always start with an image which has caught my imagination. Why something arrests my eye at any particular time is the most interesting question. The original image might come from a photo, a movie or another painting. What I find fascinating is what happens while I paint. The initial image will take on a life of its own and some kind of story seems to emerge."

Rothenstein is married to the director Stephen Frears and has two children.