This artist uses palette knives to create figurative paintings without drawing first┃Romany Mark

At Arts to Hearts Project, our 101 Artbook series keeps growing in ways that surprise even us. After editions on Landscape, Photography, Floral, Animal, Nature, Abstract, Portrait, Collage and more, we are really excited to introduce our Dog Edition.

And before you smile at that, hear us out. Because this edition is not about cute dog portraits. It is about the relationship between humans and dogs and what that relationship holds and reveals and teaches us about ourselves.

The artists in this edition are using the dog as a subject, a symbol, a companion, a mirror, and in some cases a doorway into work that goes much deeper than you would expect.

Romany Mark Bruce is one of our selected artists in this edition. And honestly his story is one of those ones where you start reading thinking this will be about art and dogs and twenty minutes later you are sitting with something much bigger than that.

Romany is a painter and sculptor born in Ireland and based in England. He trained as a lawyer, not an artist. Spent years in personal injury and clinical negligence litigation specialising in catastrophic brain injury cases.

Art happened on the side, in evening classes, almost by accident. He signed up for photography, the class was full, he took sculpture instead, and never looked back. How a full-time legal career gradually gave way to a full-time art practice is a journey that involved loss and friendship and a decision that changed the direction of his entire life. What triggered that decision and who it was for is something he talks about during the interview and it is not a story you forget easily.

He is completely self-taught as a painter. He works with palette knives instead of brushes, approaches the canvas the way he would approach a piece of clay, building and scraping and cutting into paint as if it were a three-dimensional material.

He calls himself a sculptor who paints and the title of his monograph spanning thirty years of work is Sculpting Colour. That tells you everything about how his brain works.

He has created public monuments including the Brighton and Hove AIDS Memorial, worked in bronze and resin and marble, exhibited internationally, and built a body of work that moves between the human figure, insects, abstract forms, and questions about what it means to exist. And somewhere inside all of that there is a dog.

An Irish Terrier named Arkle whose nose a ladybird once landed on and accidentally sparked an entire body of work. How a moment that small became something that large is the kind of creative origin story that reminds you to pay attention to the tiny things because you never know which one is going to change everything.

Let’s get to know Romany through our conversation with him about how a law career became an art career, why he paints with sculpture tools, what his Irish Terrier Arkle taught him about paying attention, and why he believes a piece of art does not need to survive in order to have mattered.

Q1. Could you share your journey from growing up in Ireland and working in law to becoming a full-time painter and sculptor?

I am Romany Mark Bruce, a painter and sculptor born in Ireland and based in England since moving here to study law at university. My legal career focused on personal injury and clinical negligence litigation, ultimately specialising in cases involving catastrophic brain injury. While working as a young lawyer in London, I decided to enrol in evening classes in photography. As photography course was fully booked, I signed up for a sculpture class, assuming that photography places would eventually become available.

Things did not work out as planned. Almost immediately, I became completely absorbed by sculpture and never made the switch. At the time, the demands of my legal career limited the amount of time I could devote to my artistic interests. Several years later, after moving to Brighton, I found more opportunity to pursue creative activities outside the office and once again enrolled in sculpture classes.

My passion for sculpture quickly deepened. Within a couple of years, I held my first exhibition, and a decade later I left full-time legal practice in order to dedicate more time to my work as an artist. The defining moment was the death of my close friend and soulmate, Paul Tay, to AIDS in 1992.

Paul was only 32 years old when he died, and his loss had a profound and lasting impact on both my life and my artistic practice. As a direct result of Paul’s death, seven years later, at the age of 39, I came to the realisation that if I was ever to fulfil my ambitions as a sculptor, I needed to make a fundamental change. I left behind the security of a full-time legal career in order to devote myself more fully to art, a decision that transformed the direction of my life.

Q2. You’ve said that even when painting, you think like a sculptor, how does that shape the way you approach a canvas?

I am completely self taught as a painter. I had been painting for several years after being persuaded to give it a go by a friend who knew I was obsessed with colour. One Sunday afternoon I got locked in my house when my key snapped in the lock of my front door. Rather than settled into be disgruntled at missing a drinks party, I decided to tackle a canvas with my sculpture tools rather than brushes.

Working with palette knives I began to realise that I was channelling my sculpture techniques into my painting, something I had never done before. Until then I had avoided painting the human form, believing that not being accomplished at drawing that it was something I would be unable to do. I found an ability, and a confidence that I did not know I had.

From that day I have approached a canvas as I would a piece of clay, looking at the canvas as a three dimensional form rather than a flat surface, using a knife to explore form, with minimal preparation, applying paint, and cutting and scrapping away. I describe myself as a sculptor who paints, hence the title of a monograph of my work spanning 30 years -‘ Sculpting Colour’.

Q3. Your memorial speaks to both loss & resilience was that balance important from the beginning?

When I was approached to submit a design for The Brighton and Hove AIDS Memorial. I deliberated on two powerful but different memorials I had experienced. One was in “Women in a Bomb Blast” by Irish sculptor F.E. McWilliam. a bronze sculpture in Northern Ireland where I grew up during The Troubles depicts a woman being being violently blown off her feet.

The second was the memorial to John F Kennedy Memorial Plaza in Dallas, Texas, outside the courthouse where I worked whilst spending a year in the US after leaving law school. Designed by an architect Philip Johnson, the concrete minimalist structure is powerful in it’s peace and tranquility. I wanted my contribution to acknowledge the tragedy of the AIDS, but I did not want it to dictate the feeling of those interacting with it.

I wanted to to acknowledge the positive progress being made in all aspects of advancements, both medical and social, in the treatment of HIV & AIDS. The two bronze figures soar upwards, their path having not only crossed but touched, but if you follow the trajectory of their intertwined paths, it is not certain if they ever touch again. One figure presents the male sex, the other is androgynous, representing all sexes and genders.

Q4. The Nature of Being began with a ladybird landing on your dog’s nose, how did that moment inspire the series?

In 2020 I had gone to live for in Pietrasanta in Italy to sculpt in marble, but had to return to Brighton suddenly because of the outbreak of Covid. I spent hours every day trying to abstract black squares on canvas feeling creatively spent. My response was, as always, to work day and night .

Eventually something ambiguous appeared, suggestive of agricultural machinery.Then came an insect, then a collection. Later I traced the thread back to a ladybird settling on my Irish Terrier’s nose. My experience is that the work comes first, the recognition of the source of inspiration comes later.

Q5. In Filth & Dreams, what interested you about bringing beauty and discomfort together?

As an artist, I have never seen these two concepts as mutually exclusive. instead, they are deeply intertwined, each amplifying and defining the other. In my collection Filth & Dreams I did not set out to explore the relationship between beauty and discomfort, but it did emerge during the course of it’s creation.

The way I paint has a significant contribution, I paint in chaos, using palette knives rather than brushes, with vigorous energy, applying and scrapping away many thin layers of translucent paint. I do not believe this tension is confined to my Filth and Dreams collection, but perhaps it is more apparent there.

Q6. How does it feel knowing the Brighton & Hove AIDS Memorial carries meanings beyond your original intentions?

The bronze sculpture as a piece of modern art is far less significant than its purpose – to commemorate those whose lives have been affected by HIV & AIDS. To know that the death of my dearest friend Paul Tay was instrumental in making this happen is, at times, overwhelming.

Paul’s loss left a mark on me that has never fully healed, and perhaps never should. It would be too easy to say that the memorial gave his death meaning — his life already had that. What the sculpture does, I hope, is ensure that people like Paul are not quietly forgotten, that their names and their stories remain present in the life of this city.

There are moments, particularly on World AIDS Day when the candlelit vigil takes place, when the weight of all of that becomes almost impossible to hold. Standing with everyone else holding my candle (more often than not in the rain) I am not the sculptor, merely someone who has lost a friend.

Q7. You’ve spoken about destroying work during your process, what has making and unmaking taught you about creativity?

Initially, when I destroyed work to free up more room in my studio, it felt like failure – as though I were discarding the investment of so much time and effort. What I have learned that destruction can bring clarity, and enable me to understand enable me to understand what the process itself has taught me. The destruction is part of the process. A piece does not need to continue to exist in order to have validity.

Q8. Has working with marble in Pietrasanta changed the way you think about sculpture and what you want to create next?

I have been unable to return to Pietrasanta. My Irish Terrier, Arkle, is very old and has health issues which mean that for now I will stay in Brighton. Since my return I have mainly been painting, but my intention is to return to sculpting later in the year.

Q9. After working across painting, bronze, resin, and marble, which medium still surprises you most?

Any surprises I have experienced with different mediums have not been the medium itself, but my reaction to it. I usually work very rapidly and energetically. Sculpting in marble is a slow and deliberate process. What surprised me was my patience. Carving with hand tools induces a peaceful and rhythmic pace, and it takes a long time to understand the piece of stone you are working on.

Q10. Has your definition of success changed since you first became a professional artist?

I learned relatively quickly that that for me success has little to do with success. Knowing that I have created good work is my only measure of success.

Q11. Your work often explores what it means to exist—has making art brought you any closer to understanding that question?

That is a huge question. Creating art is my purpose, I can’t imagine my existence without it.

Q12. If your younger self, making art while practicing law, visited your studio today, what would surprise him most?

I am no longer in Pietrasanta, but in my studio in Brighton they might be surprised to see a wall of neatly arranged art and cookery books in contrast to the chaos of the rest of the studio.

Q13. What advice would you give artists balancing practical careers with their creative ambitions?

Nothing. I made the right choice at the right time for me when I decided to give up a career in the law to pursue my art, and without consultation with or advice from anyone else.

As we wrapped up our conversation with Romany, one idea kept pulling at us. Second lives. Not in the spiritual sense but in the creative sense, the idea that some people’s most important work does not come from their first career or their first calling or their first attempt at figuring out who they are.

It comes from everything that happened before they finally sat down and made the thing they were always supposed to make.

Romany spent years in law. Serious, demanding, emotionally heavy law. And he did not waste those years. He carried everything he saw and felt and processed during that time straight into his studio and it lives in his paintings and his sculptures now. The weight of it. The understanding of human fragility. The precision. The discipline. None of it disappeared when he changed careers. It transformed.

And we think about how many artists feel guilty about the years they spent doing something else. The accounting job. The teaching career. The corporate work. The decade they gave to raising children or running a business or just surviving.

There is this assumption in the creative world that if you did not start making art at twenty-one and never stop then you are somehow behind. That the years doing other things were detours rather than preparation. Romany’s practice proves the opposite. Everything he did before art made his art better. Not in spite of those years but because of them.

That applies to every artist reading this who came to their practice late. Your previous life is not a gap on your creative CV. It is material. It is depth. It is the reason your work will carry something that someone who has only ever been inside a studio cannot access.

A lawyer sees the world differently from a painter. A nurse sees differently. A teacher sees differently. A parent sees differently. And when those ways of seeing finally enter a creative practice they bring richness that cannot be faked or taught or shortcut.

The accidents are worth thinking about too. Because every artist has them. The class that was full so you took a different one. The material that ran out so you tried something else. The plan that fell apart and left you standing in front of a canvas with no idea what to do next. Most of us treat those moments as problems.

Romany treated them as openings. And each one took him somewhere that planning never would have found. That is not luck. That is availability. Being open enough to follow where the unexpected leads instead of fighting your way back to the original plan.

We think the art world would be a more interesting place if more people trusted that. If more artists let themselves zigzag instead of forcing straight lines. If more people said yes to the thing that was not part of the plan and followed it to see where it went. Romany’s entire body of work, from public memorials to marble sculptures to palette knife paintings to a series inspired by a ladybird on a dog’s nose, exists because he kept saying yes to things he did not see coming.

For art lovers and collectors, what makes Romany’s work worth serious attention is exactly this. That it carries a life inside it. Not just artistic skill but decades of human experience that give the surfaces and the forms a weight you can feel.

His paintings are physical and textured and energetic in a way that comes from thinking like a sculptor even on a flat canvas. His sculptures hold a presence that comes from someone who spent years understanding human fragility through law before he ever picked up a chisel. That combination is rare. And it produces work that holds up the longer and closer you look at it.

Follow Romany Mark Bruce through the links below and see his work for yourself.