Carole Robb

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Carole Robb (born 1943) is a British artist and a member of the National Academy of Design in New York. She divides her time between New York, Rome, Venice, and London.

She was born in Port Glasgow, Scotland, and studied painting at the Glasgow School of Art (1961–65). She has said the Glasgow School shaped her studio discipline and that the harsh Scottish weather influenced her imagination. She earned an MFA at the University of Reading in 1979, studying with Terry Frost. In 1979 she received a British Arts Council painting award and the British Rome Prize, spending 1979–80 in Rome. She then went to New York on a Fulbright fellowship (1980–81).

Robb is a figurative painter who builds on the life drawing she learned in Glasgow. Her work often draws on mythology and is influenced by film. Her Showers with Heroes series (2018) was inspired by Fellini’s La Dolce Vita and Clint Eastwood’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

She has shown with Forum Gallery in New York (1982–1996); Robert Steele Gallery in New York (2006–2008); Denise Bibro Gallery in New York (2016–2018); and Tibaldi Arte Contemporanea in Rome (2020). In 2025 she had a solo Venice show, Stato da Mar, with Tom Rowland Gallery at GPS London, and in June 2025 she displayed related works at the University Women’s Club in London. Her work has also been shown at Arnolfini Gallery (1979), the National Theatre Gallery in London, and the South London Gallery (1983).

Robb was elected to the National Academy of Design in 2010. She has held artist residencies in the United States from 1980 to 1987, including at the MacDowell Colony. Her paintings are in major collections such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; the National Academy Museum of Art in New York; the Victoria and Albert Museum in London; the Imperial War Museum in London; and the 1851 Royal Commission collection in London.

She has been a visiting artist at various institutions and was Head of Atelier (Painting) at the New York Studio School from 2005 to 2013. She has been the Artistic Director of the Rome Art Program in Italy since 2009.