ROBERT ROTH

American

b. 1965, NY

“I am interested in going beyond our physical surroundings, seeking to capture that inherent emotion of inner peace — that unique space between reality, abstraction, and mystery.”
— RR

Robert Roth’s work moves fluidly between landscape, still life, and abstraction, exploring light, atmosphere, and the emotional resonance of familiar forms. His Sky Field paintings balance gestural movement with quiet restraint, hovering between observation and imagination. Expansive horizons and shifting cloud formations create a sense of openness and reflection, allowing the work to move between drama and serenity, calm and quiet bliss. Alongside landscape, Roth explores classical themes of still life, geometric structure, and the figure. His collage-based approach often echoes a flattened, Cubist perspective, combining layers of paint, oil stick, and drawing to create compositions that feel both structured and dreamlike.

Roth grew up in the historic whaling town of Cold Spring Harbor, New York, where the open vistas and estuaries of the eastern shoreline deeply influenced his connection to landscape. As a graduate of Rhode Island School of Design, he studied painting under Thomas Sgouros and developed a celebrated practice of drawing that continues to inform his work today. Roth’s practice has also been shaped through his mentors, Alex Katz and Claes Oldenburg, both influencing his thinking around scale, clarity of form, and emotion. Roth’s work is held in public and private collections, with notable patrons including Taylor Swift, The Grammy Awards, Columbia University, The Ritz-Carlton, and The New Yorker. His work has been exhibited widely throughout the United States, including New York City’s American Collage Exhibition, where his paintings were shown alongside Edward Hopper, Frank Stella, and Richard Diebenkorn. He has received recognition from The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Heckscher Museum of Art, and the National Endowment for the Arts. His international reach includes collections in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, New Zealand, Russia, South Korea and Hong Kong.

Robert Roth and his wife, artist Cheryl Roth (RISD alumna), live and work in their 1850s farmhouse and studio barn in Northeast Ohio, spending part of each summer on the island of Martha’s Vineyard.