Selected Press
Conversation with Wells-Fray-Smith, Curator Barbican Museum London (2022)
FS: So everything is real, it‘s something you’ve experienced out in the world.
HR: It‘s always something real, yes. Usually when I start drawing, I feel prompted by a special moment.
I don’t draw just a pretty scene, it doesn’t interest me - it‘s got to be something that hits me and then I‘ll do the drawing.
Sometimes a very fleeting moment, a certain cloud in the sky or one of my children sitting in a certain way.
And I do the drawings almost like scribbles…
Interview with XX, @mepaintsme (2026)
FS: When you return to a sketch in the studio to begin a painting, colour and light are part of the original experience—elements a drawing inevitably loses. Do you make colour notations? Is it difficult to recognize when a painting has drifted too far from that initial experience?
HR: Yes, that is true, a drawing lacks the colour but looking at it, I remember the colours! I love this tension of being a step away from the original experience , painting directly from perception does not interest me.In my drawings I do make colour notations, if there is a particular exciting colour shift or combination, but otherwise I relay on my memory. Colour in a painting does drift away from the original moment, but I don’t mind that at all. In fact, I enjoy creating a parallel colour system to the one out there.