Eileen Agar

Isabel Rock Isabel Rock is a creator of contemporary fairy tales. A graduate of the Royal College of Art in London, her work is an explosion of strange occurrences while a surreal narrative takes the audience on a journey into the imagination. 

In October 2023 Isabel was the winner of the Evelyn Williams Drawing Award at the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize, known as the UK’s most prestigious annual open exhibition for drawing. 

Taking inspiration from Japanese woodblock prints and Indian miniature painting Rock has developed a unique collage technique that combines bold structures with large-scale woodblock prints and intricate detailing. 

The subject is a grand mixture of humour, drama, hidden morals, fanciful characters, modern culture, mythical beings and fantastical situations. Rock creates a world that pulls you in and demands your attention. Quality of line is paramount, the drawings are created using a dipping pen and acrylic ink. An essential tool is a squirrel’s hair brush that gives incredible fine lines and was purchased on her travels in India. 

Born in Hammersmith, London in 1981, Rock knew her destiny was to be an artist. Studying Fine Art Printmaking at The University of Brighton and graduating with First Class Honours in 2004 she went on to do a Masters Degree at The Royal College of Art in London, continuing her studies in printmaking and drawing, graduating in 2008. Her first solo show at Bearspace Gallery in Deptford, London in April 2009 sold out and was the beginning of a career that continues to rise. Rock participated in the first ever India Art Fair represented by Art 1821 Gallery, where her detailed and intricate work was met with great appreciation from collectors and public. 

She has since participated in international residencies in India, Iceland, Germany and West Africa as well as building up her portfolio and exhibiting at various galleries internationally. In 2013 she won the Arts Foundation Printmaking Fellowship, a £10,000 award given to emerging artists in certain fields, only six are awarded each year. This funded a move to Berlin as the vibrant art scene in the city seemed to be the perfect place to make the next steps in her career. The city proved to be a valuable creative inspiration as it was here that Rock began to explore the written side of her visual stories, which she now performs at spoken word nights. 

Rock sat out the pandemic in her port-a-cabin studio near Reading, UK, creating a series of large-scale collages and writing surreal short stories. In 2024 Isabel is to be given a solo show at Hastings Contemporary as part of her winning the 2023 Trinity Buoy Drawing prize. 

Isabel lives and works in London where she also enjoys roller skating, growing sweet peas, reading novels and thinking up new and wild things to draw. Isabel Rock’s artworks are held in the collections of The Victoria & Albert Museum, London, The Royal College of Art, London and many Private and Public collections primarily in The UK and India.

In the wake of World War I’s ravaging of Europe, artists delved into the unconscious mind to confront and grapple with this reality. Poet and critic André Breton, a leader of the Surrealist movement who authored the 1924 Surrealist Manifesto, called this approach “a violent reaction against the impoverishment and sterility of thought processes that resulted from centuries of rationalism.” Surrealist art emerged in the 1920s with dreamlike and uncanny imagery guided by a variety of techniques such as automatic drawing, which can be likened to a stream of consciousness, to channel psychological experiences.

Although Surrealism was a groundbreaking approach for European art, its practitioners were inspired by Indigenous art and ancient mysticism for reenvisioning how sculptures, paintings, prints, performance art and more could respond to the unsettled world around them.

Surrealist artists were also informed by the Dada movement, which originated in 1916 Zurich and embraced absurdity over the logic that had propelled modernity into violence. Some of the Surrealists had witnessed this firsthand, such as Max Ernst, who served in the trenches during World War I, and Salvador Dalí, whose otherworldly paintings and other work responded to the dawning civil war in Spain.

Other key artists associated with the revolutionary art and literary movement included Man Ray, Joan Miró, René Magritte, Yves Tanguy, Frida Kahlo and Meret Oppenheim, all of whom had a distinct perspective on reimagining reality and freeing the unconscious mind from the conventions and restrictions of rational thought. Pablo Picasso showed some of his works in “La Peinture Surréaliste” — the first collective exhibition of Surrealist painting — which opened at Paris’s Galerie Pierre in November of 1925. (Although Magritte is best known as one of the visual Surrealist movement’s most talented practitioners, his famous 1943 painting, The Fifth Season, can be interpreted as a formal break from Surrealism.)

The outbreak of World War II led many in the movement to flee Europe for the Americas, further spreading Surrealism abroad. Generations of modern and contemporary artists were subsequently influenced by the richly symbolic and unearthly imagery of Surrealism, from Joseph Cornell to Arshile Gorky.

Find a collection of original Surrealist paintings, sculptures, prints and multiples and more art on 1stDibs.

Painting is an art form that has spanned innumerable cultures, with artists using the medium to tell stories, explore and communicate ideas and express themselves. To bring abstract, landscape and still-life paintings into your home is to celebrate and share in the long tradition of this discipline.

When we look at paintings, particularly those that originated in the past, we learn about history, other cultures and countries of the world. Like every other work of art, paintings — whether they are contemporary creations or works that were made during the 19th century — can often help us clearly see and understand the world around us in a meaningful and interesting way.

Cave walls were the canvases for what were arguably the world’s first landscape paintings, which depict natural scenery through art. Portrait paintings and drawings, which, along with sculpture, were how someone’s appearance was recorded prior to the advent of photography, are at least as old as Ancient Egypt. In the Netherlands, landscapes were a major theme for painters as early as the 1500s. Later, artists in Greece, Rome and elsewhere created vast wall paintings to decorate stately homes, churches and tombs. Today, creating a wall of art is a wonderful way to enhance your space, showcase beautiful pieces and tie an interior design together.

No matter your preference, whether you favor Post-Impressionist paintings, animal paintings, Surrealism, Pop art or another movement or specific period, arranging art on a blank wall allows you to evoke emotions in a room while also showing off your tastes and interests. A symmetrical wall arrangement may comprise a grid of four to six pieces or, for an odd number of works, a horizontal row. Asymmetrical arrangements, which may be small clusters of art or large, salon-style gallery walls, have a more collected and eclectic feel. Download the 1stDibs app, which includes a handy “View on Wall” feature that allows you to see how a particular artwork will look on a particular wall, and read about how to arrange wall art. And if you’re searching for the perfect palette for your interior design project, what better place to turn than to the art world’s masters of color?

On 1stDibs, you’ll find an expansive collection of paintings and other fine art for your home or office. Browse abstract paintings, portrait paintings, paintings by popular artists and more today.