Robbie Motion studied Art History and Film and Media at the University of Otago. His painting practice began through creating artwork for album covers and posters for local Dunedin bands. Unsurprisingly, his paintings possess a languid, distorted quality that is at once melodic and unsettling. There is a certain vulnerability to these figures; with limbs and faces distorted, obliterated, and overlapping they are at once absurd and graceful. Motion presents us with the abstracted parts of a face, a body, and these outward physical contortions seem to articulate internalized mental or emotional preoccupations.
Working primarily through the medium of oil paint, Motion's art practice concerns itself with the spaces between moment and movement.
Motion's work has also been commissioned by musicians and businesses across New Zealand and the wider world. Below is a catalog of this commission History.
"Not dissimilar from Francis Bacon’s self portraits, the lines and exuberant palette in Robbie Motion’s paintings emphasize life’s transience."
"Robbie's skill can be seen in his choice of color, composition and, most notably, in his maneuvering between classical painterly strokes to the cartoonish black outline of his figures. Just as we travel between our inner thoughts and real life, his fractured black limbs traverse from the constructed world to that of flesh and bones."