Rima Staines

Rima Staines is an artist whose work straddles myth, magical realism and the folk arts. She has worked over the years predominantly as a painter, but also with music, writing, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, theatre, puppetry, animation and book arts. In 2018 she was a finalist in the 'Best Artist' category of the World Fantasy awards. She is a mother to two young sons and lives in Devon.

Rima has a long-held fascination with the idea of the liminal - that which lies at the edge of culture and society as well as the literal boundaries between one place and another, both metaphorical and real - and with the power of art that comes from that place. Her work is a kind of “Iconography of the Otherworld”.
Fascinated by how talismanic, apotropaic imagery has been used throughout human history to make real magic, she has a strong belief in the power of art to change things, and thus her work is simultaneously alchemy and activism.
Stories, too, play a fundamental role in Rima’s work - she believes that they speak truth to us in a similar non-linear language to that which imagery speaks, and that we need them more than we think we do: inside them are old maps back home.

Book Arts & Crafts (1st Class Hons) - London University of the Arts 2003

Forthcoming SOLO EXHIBITION in September 2024 at Southcombe Gallery, Dartmoor.

Winter Show - Old Lock Up Gallery, Derbyshire 2023

Go Wherever You Wish For Verily You Are Well Protected - Dartington, Devon 2023

Open show - Old Lock Up Gallery, Derbyshire 2023

All Fools II - The Manger Gallery, Derbyshire, 2022

The Life I have Not Lived But Can Remember - Otaki, New Zealand 2021

Curio - Buzzard Gallery, Devon, 2017

Widdershins 2016 - Pathways to the Faerie - Green Hill Arts, Moretonhampstead, Devon 2016

Artists’ Favourite Poems - Masham Gallery, North Yorkshire, 2016

Labour of Love - An Exploration of Motherhood - The Glorious Art House, Exeter - 2016

The Fernie Brae - Portland, Oregon, USA - 2015

Hannah Willow & Friends - Obsidian Art Gallery, Stoke Mandeville - 2015

A Fourfold Fable - an exhibition of mythic art by four Devon painters - The Glorious Art House, Exeter, 2014 (curator and artist)

100 : A Making of Trees - ONCA Gallery, Brighton, 2014

Ocmundtune Arts - Okehampton, Devon 2014

Artisan Gallery, Chagford, Devon 2012-2014

Widdershins - Dartmoor Mythic Art - Green Hill Arts, Moretonhampstead, Devon 2013

Elshieshields, Dumfries, Scotland 2012

Lanval - Centre de l’Imaginaire Arthurien, Brocéliande, France 20...