About Rosie

Rosie Galloway-Smith is a mixed media artist who creates paintings, drawings, sculpture, and digital pieces that explore semiotics, materiality, and fractured identity. 

Every day items such as clothing and utensils are reoccurring themes, alongside other found objects. She uses a mixture of different materials to layer meaning and explore their own histories and significance.  Disintegration, fracturing and morphing continue to interest her, especially as a way to explore a surrealist psychotic disruption of meaning to make sense of contemporary and historical issues relating to modern Britain. 

The resultant pieces of art work often incite an emotional and curious response, feeling recognisable yet unfamiliar at the same time. Altogether they form an ongoing personal enquiry into fragmented meaning and experience. 

Expressing strong and ambiguous emotion is central to her work and each piece of work has a personal element. Rosie hopes to make space for the viewer to bring their own emotional responses and experiences to the piece.

Born in England, and raised in Scotland and Cumbria, where she currently resides, Rosie grew up in an eccentric family with Roman Catholic parents and eleven siblings.

She completed her undergraduate degree in Fine Art at University of Humberside, Queens Gardens, Hull in 1996 and wrote a final thesis analysing the Virgin Mary using the work of Jacques Lacan and Julia Kristeva. After a few years travelling in Portugal ad Barcelona as an English Language teacher, Rosie returned to the UK and completed a PGCE in Secondary Art education at the Institute of Education, London. In 2005 she emigrated to Ontario, Canada, returning to the UK again in 2007.

Rosie has worked extensively in art education, in both formal and informal settings and is keen to promote reflective, personal, and insightful creativity in students. Working with young people has enabled her to stay in touch with what matters to them and she regularly hears from ex students. She has experienced both British and Canadian ways of teaching art and has organised and led a wide variety of events and workshops with the public.

Rosie completed the Mlitt Fine Art Painting at Glasgow School of Art in 2018. She has exhibited extensively in Cumbria and internationally. News and updates can be found on her Instagram page, @rosiegallowaysmith.