Robyn Neild has worked as an international fashion illustrator for the last twenty years working for clients ranging from Givenchy, Vivienne Westwood, Elizabeth Arden to Hush Puppies, Barnes & Noble and United Airlines. Her illustrations have graced Fashion magazines Vogue, Elle, Glamour & Harper & Queen, and Tatler, London stores Liberty & Harrods. Now her medium of choice and form of creative expression takes the form of bronze sculpture with experimental patinas. Robyn takes a traditional approach via the tactile manipulation of modelling wax, called the 'lost wax technique' as well as experimenting with a variety of patinas and finishes to the bronze. Robyn’s sculptures playfully investigate a timeless yet fashionable form, how clothing can add emphasis or distort the viewers eye in a fluid, textural visual language, through contemplative posing and within the throes of natural movement. Robyn’s sculptures are made in her coastal studio, no moulds are used, so no two bronzes are the same. She creates her sculptures with wax, fabric, paper, plant life, driftwood, roots, seaweed. If you look carefully at the surface of some of her bronzes they carry the pattern of her fingerprints as they move, swirl, and form the wax, building up the layers. Robyn’s exploration of bronze medium encapsulates natural elements; items she finds on her walks in nature. Her home on the Kent coastline inspires and informs her art: the Marshlands and Dungeness, a flat shingle expanse of stark beauty, home to the abandoned shells of old fishing boats, rare animals and flora. Texture and form are significant in Robyn’s work, pushing the limits of the ‘lost wax’ casting technique to force the metal thinner and thinner, to halter, stop, to leave gaps and pauses, which are as important as the solid bronze structure.
