The Omelette Challenge: Rose Wylie at the RA

Rose Wylie’s new exhibition ‘The Picture Comes First’, at the Royal Academy, quenches a thirst felt by Jennifer Caroline Campbell for visceral and challenging paintings. Her review explores how Wylie’s work provokes a variety of responses and transmits influence within a network of artists, showing her to be a true ‘artist’s artist’.

Rose Wylie, Lilith and Gucci Boy, 2024, 207 x 306 cm 

The Royal Academy website reads ‘meet the rebel painter of the British art world’. While I appreciate this quite fabulous introduction to the artist, the word ‘rebel’ doesn’t quite sit with me. Its odour is too romantic, tragic, and somehow performative in a Jackson Pollock kind of way. I prefer the word disobedient, which feels more foundational, and in tune with someone like Lilith (the first feminist according to Wylie). 

Disobedience has a particular relationship to risk. At a time when artists are increasingly asked to explain and justify their work before even reaching for their materials, and with many galleries in risk-averse mode, choosing risk in the process of artmaking feels more disobedient than ever. But the apparent safety of predictable and easily explainable art is a nullifying mirage that must be avoided by galleries, art institutions and most especially, artists. 

‘The Picture Comes First’ is curated in a way that allows the paintings to speak for themselves, with groupings of works and well-selected themes weaving through but not forcing the work to become over-digestible. The work keeps its sharp bite and its mysteries are left un-drained. Both the artist and the curator have taken risks, and it has paid off, producing a genuinely engaging exhibition. 

Wylie put it more concisely when she said, ‘I quite like risk’ (In conversation with Frances Morris, Royal Academy, 2019). She has always understood that the studio is no place to be cautious (or tidy) and that the canvas is no place for making safe bets. All those years when the paintings were piling up, along with the layers of residue from daily life, Wylie’s commitment to risk never faltered. Most impressively, her recent mega success has not dampened this approach. It is palpable in every blob and dash of paint, from the oldest to the newest of the works that now scale the grand old walls of the Royal Academy, making for an exhilarating ride.   

 

Rose Wylie, A Handsome Couple, 2022, oil on canvas, 174.5 x 183.5 cm

 

‘A Handsome Couple’ is one of my favourite paintings in the exhibition. A prawn-like wide-eyed Duchess with a tiny stern mouth stares out at me, her pink hand uncomfortably squished through her blocky Duke husband’s arm, their shoulders merging in a way that makes no sense. A miniature curvy blond in a flattering tight dress, without identifiable hands or feet, dances in front of the Duke’s other shoulder, looked at by a loosely scored out pointy-nosed face with a top knot partially entering the painting on the right-hand side. 

Listing of the contents of a Wylie painting is a fun game. It also helps demonstrate something key in her work. Her starting points are distilled from the variety of everyday life (television, a memory, a Rembrandt painting, a breakfast, a scriptural figure, newspapers, a skirt, a park bench et cetera) but become something else through her process. This ‘something else’ is unapologetically specific and yet somehow resists being fully pinned down. It is often serious yet absurd, startling yet deadpan, pointed yet loose or awkward yet elegant. Most vitally it cannot be pre-empted, because the transformation that produces it is determined by a distinct process.    

 

Rose Wylie, Sitting on a Bench, 2007, oil on canvas.

 

Alongside painting (often with ill-kept brushes, sometimes with bare hands, or as removal, by scraping the paint away) Wylie’s process also includes drawing, and reconfiguring drawings by cutting and sticking. Apparently, she once spent nine hours on one A4 drawing, making minute readjustments. By these methods the picture shapes itself in her hands. This approach to process can only happen when the artist is willing to make friends with risk. For painters, this means allowing for that feeling of dread and exasperation, when you know that the painting you have worked on for hours might well be rubbish. It means letting the urge to throw the painting in the bin wrestle with the urge to keep going anyway. Sometimes it means starting all over again on top of multiple attempts. And it always means taking considerations like ‘will this painting look good, be liked, make sense, fit an explanation, look like art’, and throwing them straight out of the window. In the words of the exhibition title, the picture come’s first. It must lead the way, like the light from a torch just ahead of you on a dark country road.

I’ve always found Wylie’s paintings to be a tonic in this regard. When I see them, my bravery is topped up and I go back to the studio with more disobedience than before. I’m jealous of those who have not come across her work previously and who get to experience it for the first time in such an extensive and lively clump in this exhibition. 

The first of her paintings I remember seeing is ‘City Road’ (1999). Friend and artist Paul Kindersley pointed it out to me, sometime around 2013. I don’t remember where I saw it, but I vividly remember the painting itself and how I responded to it. In ‘City Road’ a Little Bo Peep character kneels (or stands but with very short legs) on thickly painted green hills, with stodgy grey mountains wobbling behind her and a tiny sheep peeking out from her white skirt. The painting was inspired by the Shepherdess Cafe on the corner of City Road and Shepherdess Walk in London, which before it changed ownership in 2020, had a Shepherdess logo and gingham curtains painted on the windows. My initial reaction to the painting was confusion, it was unlike anything I had seen before. It took a bit of time for me to realise how good the confusing feeling was. It’s as if the Little Bo Peep figure climbed inside my brain like a parasite, drawing me back to Wylie’s work again and again, eventually tipping me into full obsession. Which begs the question, is it possible for an entranced fan like me to write a serious review of this exhibition? I wonder this now, asking Bo Peep for her opinion, who still resides in the back of my mind. ‘Get help’ she says, while prodding my brain with her spindly shepherd’s hook. So, I do. 

Artist Cathy Lomax programmed a solo exhibition of Rose Wylie’s work at Transition Gallery in 2008 called ‘Wear What You Like’. I asked Lomax for her response to a favourite painting in the Royal Academy exhibition: 

 

‘I saw this earlyish Wylie painting for the first time at the Royal Academy show and was immediately drawn in by its combination of directness, playfulness and strangeness - layers which reveal themselves as I look and look again. The axe is so perfectly described with such brevity whilst also looking like it is made of chocolate. A shape that I thought was a leaf is actually a snake. There are so many intriguing components – what is that strange brown section over the figure’s head? I also love the diffused peachy pink line that continues the span of the figure’s shoulder. The composition which at first look is haphazard is actually well balanced and most importantly it works. The caption tells me that the figure is the actress Rita Tushingham, the star of ‘A Taste of Honey’, and this unexpected British film connection makes me look once again. This is what I love about Wylie’s paintings, they offer immediate visual pleasure in their minimal depiction of familiar objects and people, but the strange juxtapositions demand more investigation. Looking. And then there is the text, not included on this painting but something that Wylie often adds to her work, and which is frequently truncated. This text is part of the slow reveal as it comes together with the painted image adding an extra layer of intrigue.'                     Cathy Lomax, March 2026.

 

Rose Wylie, Actress and Axe, 1992, oil on canvas

I also loved this painting, especially the way the title activates the image and vice versa. It’s quite a sparse picture with the shapes hovering just on the edge of recognition, yet it draws me right into its suspense and I really want to know what that actress is thinking about that axe. But also, I don’t actually want to know, because the mystery of it is so rich. Made in 1992 it may have been one of those paintings that spent time in the back of the shed, waiting in the dark, not knowing what future awaits. This thought, of the actress and the axe, waiting in the back of the shed, drives me to look for some more early supporters of Wylie’s work.

Artist Jake Clark put on a three-person exhibition at Transition Gallery in 2010 called ‘Rubbernecking’ that included Wylie’s paintings. He shares what he remembers of the experience:

‘Rose had the paintings sent by van and the huge canvases arrived stapled to stretchers. I had to pull them off and then staple them back to the wall for the show. One was of Peter Crouch and Rose was pretty laid back about the installation. She said ‘hullo Jake’ as a greeting, in the emails to me during the show.’ Jake Clark, March 2026.

Artist Jeff McMillan also included Wylie’s paintings in a group exhibition, titled ‘Reverse Engineering’, at PEARL Projects in 2002 (which also included Jake Clark’s work). Jeff interviewed Wylie nine years later, for Turps Banana magazine, issue 10 (now sold out), which he kindly sent me a copy of. In the interview Jeff describes the process of painting as being about: 

McMillan:‘figuring out what you want by sticking with it long enough so that it begins to become clear, though that revelation can be a very long process.’ 

Wylie: ‘You don’t want to do it for so long that you get proficient and artistic and assured, and that’s why so many of us want to go backwards. But you need to be in it long enough to know what it was that you wanted to find out.’ 

I asked Jeff to reflect on Wylie’s practice now, 15 years on from the Turps interview and 24 years on from the exhibition at PEARL Projects: 

‘I think Rose’s work has been incredibly consistent (and consistently good) for the last two or three decades, honing her unique method of building up paintings, editing, and using text which is so brilliant. One of the great things about her painting is that she treats canvas like she does her drawings, she’s not afraid to cut or tear or glue new images on top of old ones to make the paintings more interesting or even more awkward, and I mean that in the best way.’ Jeff McMillan, March 2026

I think the distrust of proficiency that Wylie describes is key, as is the consistent honing that Jeff refers to, and these two aspects are not as contradictory as they might seem. There is both an avoidance of certainty and a dogged chasing of something consistent, and the tension between the two is where Wylie’s paintings find their potency.

‘I was in that show at Pearl Gallery’ says Bo Peep, doing an aggressive dance inside my prefrontal cortex. ‘I want to go further back, to the time before Rose painted me’ she demands. ‘O.K’ I say. 

In the 1990’s Wylie was teaching alongside her husband, the painter Roy Oxlade, at the infamous Tunbridge Wells Summer School. Artist Kath Thompson taught ‘painting as expression’ there alongside Rose, Roy and Brian Watterson. She picked out ‘Breakfast’ as her favourite painting in the Royal Academy exhibition and explains why:

‘Such a humble dish yet Rose makes it powerful, the burnt umber engulfing the white shining out, the black spoon keeps it active -- such a dynamic; beautiful, moving. The Exhibition is so alive with multifarious subjects, paint inventions, colour and dynamism... All amazing.... Rose is amazing.’ Kath Thompson, March 2026. 

Rose Wylie, Breakfast, 2020, oil on canvas, 183 x 307 cm 

Artist Jeb Haward, who was a student at the Tunbridge Wells Summer School, tells me a bit about his time there and his relationship to Wylie’s work:

‘It changed everything for me. Rose challenged my assumptions and made me think about what can a painting be? An aesthetic object, a personal reflection or/and a response to the multiple stimuli that bombards us? … Rose provided a kind of wild and revolutionary idea about what can be painted and breaking conventions. Not an inspiration but a challenge. The remarkable Rose and her free spirit are infectious. One cannot help, after looking at her work, but feel refreshed, amused and somehow liberated. But from what? Rose Wylie kicks painterly conventions, assumed aesthetic hierarchies and stale academic formulas firmly up the backside. Being free of these shackles Rose has done us all a favour. She is a true original. 

Every time I go into the studio to work I try to forget her. The bar is so high now. Despite my acrophobia I try to scale similar heights. It is a dizzying experience. The RA paintings are a visual earthquake... get your hard hat on.’ Jeb Haward, March 2026.

Another previous Student at the Tunbridge Wells Summer School is artist Georgia Hayes. I asked her to share her reflections on both the Summer School and Wylie’s work:

‘I think that the influence between the mature students and teachers at Tunbridge Wells went both ways, which is what one hopes a true art school might be. 

            Straight from the word go I thought Rose was a great painter. Her work usually makes me laugh and often delights me. These are feelings I would like my own paintings to bring to others (and in that way she could be said to have had an influence. She never taught me but is a special friend whose work I see a lot of).  However, anyone who makes such exciting recognisable work sets out a challenge. At the same time Roses work is always as completely original as she is herself. The Royal Academy exhibition is terrific, and I came out feeling totally exhilarated’. Georgia Hayes, March 2026.

I think Georgia and Jeb’s use of the word ‘challenge’ is apt, far better than the word ‘inspiration’. For a painter, it can be a vital challenge to see a really good painting exhibition. It fuels the chase for what Wylie calls ‘Quality’. In the exhibition guide she writes that ‘Quality’ is ‘what it’s all about …something to aim for’. 

This makes me think about the sports figures that often feature in her work, such as tennis stars and football players. My favourite is the athlete in ‘Pink Skater (Will I Win, Will I Win)’ who throws herself across two canvases in a revealing pink dress. Forgetting her flimsy ankles and their potential to fail her when she lands, she recklessly leaps anyway, straddling the barrier between the two canvases without blinking. As Wylie puts it ‘life’s a heap of barriers.’ (Rose Wylie in conversation with Frances Morris, Royal Academy, 2019). 

 

Rose Wylie, Pink Skater (Will I Win, Will I Win), 2015, oil on canvas

 

Artist Jerome, who considers Wylie’s paintings to resonate with his practice through their seeking of an honest depiction of life, picks out two sports paintings as his favourites from the Royal Academy exhibition: 

‘Having always loved both Art and Football, Rose Wylie’s paintings ‘Yellow Strip’ and ‘Arsenal & Spurs’ were stand outs. For me, these paintings encapsulate one of my favourite books, Brian Sutton-Smith’s Ambiguity of Play, particularly the rhetoric of power, where play becomes a space for struggle, identity and a place where tribal instincts of war can be peacefully exercised.’ Jerome, March 2026.

Perhaps the football paintings allow something about struggle and power to play out, something that I occasionally glimpse hovering just under the surface of Wylie’s work. If a barrier is reshaped as a challenge, and if I see someone else leap over it in a new way, playfulness becomes a key to dismantle hierarchy, and a riot is sparked in my mind. 

After seeing Wylie’s work I’m always torn between being totally engaged in the moment of experiencing it, and the urge to run straight to my studio muttering ‘must do better, must do better’. And then comes the problem of what happens when you get to the studio, after seeing these powerful paintings. This often-referenced quote from Philip Guston provides good advice on this ‘problem’ for painters: 

‘When you're in the studio painting, there are a lot of people in there with you - your teachers, friends, painters from history, critics... and one by one if you're really painting, they walk out. And if you're really painting YOU walk out.’ Philip Guston, and according to some accounts, John Cage. 

I ask Jeb Haward how he deals with this predicament in relation to the likes of Rose Wylie:

‘It can affect me to the extent that it becomes impossible to paint because I am avoiding all sorts of references to their work: colour, composition and gestures. The way I have been dealing with it is to live out the issue rather than avoid it. So, literally I will ‘take’ from paintings that I have regard for and put them in my work. Then I work through their presence in my painting until any resemblance to an aspect of Roy’s image, for instance, integrates into my painting. I don’t get hung up about stealing any more. After all we don’t feel that we shouldn’t reference a flower, vase, door handle or whatever in our work?! I have the same attitude to paintings...they exist in the world in the same way everything else exists.’ Jeb Haward, March 2026.

I asked the same question to another artist, Kirsty Buchanan, whose work, in my mind, has an affinity with Wylie’s, especially her drawings: 

‘When Rose Wylie ‘visits’ me in the studio, it is often as a bold reminder of the magic of transformation. Wylie’s vision is so undeniably hers; it gives me comfort and encourages me to look at the world with sincerity and attempt at least slightly to share that vision with the same boldness as she does. Furthermore, it is a reminder of the magic of drawing, that the connection between eye, to brain to hand is vividly apparent in everything she makes.’ Kirsty Buchanan, March 2026.

There’s a tapping sensation in my brain again, Bo Peep is pushing her shoulder into my blood brain barrier to get my attention. She tells me smugly: ‘when Rose ‘visits’ Kirsty or other painters in their studios, she is wearing her party clothes.’

Rose Wylie, Party Clothes (Rose Wylie), 2016

 

Artist Grant Foster once met Rose Wylie at a party. Here’s how it went:

‘We were introduced by Georgia Hayes. I shook Rose’s hand, which I remember, gently cocooning my slight, diminutive hand; excited, I said the worst possible thing, “I really love your work” and she rolled her eyes and moved onto another conversation with someone else.’ Grant Foster, March 2026.

I asked Grant, do you really love her work? I think I do, which is why I can’t write this review…

‘Yes. I generally don’t really love other peoples’ work, but I still do love her work. She belongs to a brilliantly idiosyncratic, British tradition of handmade paintings. This is where biscuit crumbs and the stains from mugs of tea are the paraphernalia, that get metaphorically embedded into her coarse canvas grain. There’s the suggestion of ethics within artmaking, that has thankfully happened, now that the discourse around Rose’s paintings has shifted. I see this as the ethics of the handmade. As a non-Teflon, anti-touch-screen experience of the world that can be joyfully messy, it contains multitudes. Whatever she conjures, they vie for some form of visual equality. They’re democratic paintings. Paintings about finding yourself in a strange world, with the desire to leave a handprint, regardless of whether anyone is looking or not.’ Grant Foster, March 2026.

For me, Wylie does something unique in relation to this tradition of handmade paintings and anti-touch-screen multitudes. While her paintings have areas that feel dense with layers, they also remain un-stagnant. They have that sense of the depth that comes from reworking, yet also a fresh kind of pace, like a skilfully cooked omelette folded in on itself. These dense forms find poignant charisma within the spaciousness of her compositions. How did she get so good at both making and serving those omelettes? Perhaps the answer lies in the oldest work in the exhibition, ‘The Well-Cooked Omelette’.  

Rose Wylie, The Well Cooked Omelette, 1989

 

This review has been shaped by the many eggs added along the way. The process of writing it has determined its form, and it has become more like an interconnected web of responses. When it ballooned and spilled over the edges, I just stuck another bit onto the side.  

Bo Peep and I are exhausted and hungry to make some paintings. If you want a more efficient version of this review, here it is: go and see the exhibition for yourself! 

Jennifer Caroline Campbell, March 2026.

Rose Wylie, ‘The Picture Comes First’ 

Royal Academy, London 

until 19 April 2026

Special thanks to Cathy Lomax, Jake Clark, Jeff McMillan, Kath Thompson, Jeb Haward, Georgia Hayes, Jerome, Kirsty Buchanan and Grant Foster for their generous contributions.