‘Rose Wylie: The 91-year-old art world rebel in her prime’ by Katie Razzall
2026
If an artist's studio is a window into their world, what does Rose Wylie's tell us about the woman who is about to become the first female British painter ever to have a solo exhibition in the main galleries of London's Royal Academy?
The paint-spattered wooden floor is littered with pages from old newspapers, some scrumpled up, the black and white print obscured by vibrant splotches of colour. Wylie tells me when a painting's not working, she scrapes the paint off.
"It's constantly coming off, so a lot of paint is on the floor".Brushes - some stuck fast - poke out of paint pots piled across the floorboards, table and chairs.
There's also a big bouquet of long dead flowers ("I can't bear to throw them away, they're so beautiful") and a bright pink and blue plastic lobster telephone.
Pete, the rescue cat she got more than a decade ago and who she thinks is 16 years old, prowls in, quite at home in the apparent chaos.
It all contributes to a sense of anarchy which is fitting for an artist who at 91 is a rebel in the art world, a woman who tells me she "possibly was an early punk," despite having Victorian parents who brought her up to be modest, even telling her not to wear lipstick. The child they produced had different ideas and deep red lipstick is one of Wylie's trademarks. Read more.
