Riga Forbes

“As a contemporary artist, I respond to the landscape and its conditions as an interactive way of exploring human states of being and emotion, embodied and reflected by the power and fragility of the natural world."

Riga Forbes is an award-winning landscape painter. Her work is inspired by the dynamic shapes, elements, moods and drama of weather and light within nature. She is passionate about protecting the environment and painting the British landscape and she has also travelled extensively and enjoys working with her experience of global influences.

Her painting practice combines working from sketches and photos captured directly in the landscape as well as from memory, imagination and found images. Riga Forbes now lives and works as a freelance artist in Sussex, UK.

Riga is an award-winning landscape painter. She studied Art at Oxford Brooks University and then trained in Fine Art Painting at Chelsea College of Art, London Institute, where she received her BA Hons Degree with both installation and painting work. She then moved to Sussex, raised a family and wrote and published three books before returning to her fine art practice professionally. Many of Riga's paintings and commissions now belong to private collections across the UK, Europe, Canada, Australia and South Africa.

In 2020 she was shortlisted for the Holly Bush Emerging Woman Artist Award and featured in both a solo show (2020) and group show (2021) at the Star Brewery Gallery, Lewes. In 2021 she was shortlisted for the Royal Cambrian Art Prize, the VAO International Prize, and was a Prize-winner in the Painting Awards at the XIII Florence Biennale, Italy. Her work and Artist biography can be found in the XIII Florence Biennale Catalogue 2021.