MOSAIC ARTIST - ROBYN FITZROY
Sydney-based mosaicist, landscape-lover, and pursuer of audacious creative goals.
A Journey Sparked in Ravenna
Academy Member, Robyn FitzRoy’s mosaic story began during a 2019 trip to Ravenna, where she was “swept up in the mosaic wonders” of the city.
Wandering past Koko Mosaico, curiosity pulled her inside. That moment led to her first workshop with Arianna and Anita Gallo, followed by more sessions in Ravenna, local workshops in Sydney, and eventually a deep commitment to developing an artistic practice that balances the precision of the medium with the expressive freedom she craves.
Her shift from a career in the structured realm of investment banking and corporate governance to a life centred on creativity has been profound.
This year I switched from dabbling in my practice to fully committing to my life’s purpose. I don’t want to waste time.
From Dabbling to Discipline
Robyn’s studio practice is built on preparation. She always returns to a clean workspace, tools ready, trays of tesserae sorted by palette. She often begins with a “key piece”, a favourite stone or rusted object and builds the composition around it. Music sets the rhythm. The work begins to flow.
On ideal days, she enters that rare state where hours vanish. On trickier days, she bakes a cake instead, trusting that solutions often surface overnight.
A few tools always remain within reach: curved tweezers, pick-and-poke tools, multiple nippers, the hammer and hardie, and a limitless supply of wet wipes.
Her one-word strategy for overcoming creative hurdles? “Gin!”
Robyn says that reading Steven Pressfield’s, THE WAR OF ART, was one of the influences in becoming a more disciplined Mosaicist.
Robyn and Caitlin hard at work in Bella Studio, Byron Bay, immersed in the Painterly Mosaics Workshop with esteemed tutor Mireille Swinnen.
EXPRESSIVE ABSTRACTION
Robyn calls her style “haphazard, in the best sense.” Arthritis limits the precision of her cutting, so she leans into abstraction and the irregular beauty of the landscapes she loves. Natural materials, rusted objects, minerals, and smalti come together to form evocative surface worlds.
Her award-winning work “Red Under Rust,” winner of the MAANZ 30:30 Vision exhibition in 2024, brought new confidence in her artistic voice. “Outback Undulations,” brought further accolades, being selected to the 2024 MAANZ International Exhibition and later being awarded First Prize and a Standard of Excellence Ribbon at the 2025 Sydney Royal Easter Show, affirmed her growing momentum.
“My work often takes the form of the Australian Outback – red earth, waterways, rusted objects, rocks – subjects that invite irregularity and rough edges”
Red Under Rust, Robyn FitzRoy 2024
Winner MAANZ 30:30 Vision Exhibition, 2024
PASSION AND PRACTICE
Robyn’s inspirations run wide: outback textures, geological colour shifts, rusted surfaces, and the way vast landscapes heighten attention to small natural details. She is also energised by contemporary artists who move across media, refuse to be confined, push past boundaries and resist settling for the ordinary.
Her admiration stretches from the precision and generosity of the Gallo sisters whose generous teaching shaped her foundation, to the sculptural daring of Caitlin Hepworth, her teacher and inspiration in Australia, to the ethereal movement in Verdiano Marzi’s work which she found revelatory.
She loved Marzi’s art so much that she purchased a piece and built an alcove in her home to display it.
Robyn’s creative evolution has been shaped not only by workshops but by travelling to places where mosaics carry centuries of history. Most recently, she joined Helen Bodycomb’s tour of Italy working in Ravenna and studying at the Scuola Mosaicisti del Friuli in Spilimbergo.
“Walking its mosaic-filled corridors was life-changing”
Outback Undulations, Robyn FitzRoy, 2024
MAANZ International Exhibition 2024, Finalist.
Sydney Royal Easter Show, First Prize Wall Hanging Mosaic & Standard of Excellence Award.
Cobar Copper Mine, Robyn FitzRoy, 2025
Robyn with her impressive Cobar Copper Mine highlighting her expressive use of mixed media and dimension.
Cobar Copper Mine Detail
PLANNING FOR PRODUCTIVITY
“Preparation is everything,” Robyn says. The habits instilled during studio training now shape the rhythm of her home practice. A tidy workspace, sorted palettes, and clean tools create the conditions for flow.
She works an average of twelve hours a week, although exhibition periods can see that rise to several hours each day.
Pictured in her studio setup is the disciplined order that underpins her creativity.
At the entrance to her home, the mosaic installation she created to honour her mother’s legacy signals both playfulness and artistic intention.
In Doreen’s Memory
This mosaic sits adjacent to my front door, within an urban courtyard garden planted entirely with Australian natives. The garden was created with a legacy from my mother, Doreen, whose art gallery supported and promoted the works of potters, artists, and sculptors around Australia in the 1970s.
The piece is a response both to her artistic spirit and to the carefully curated courtyard, with its rusted Corten steel planters, flowering grevilleas, corymbias, and native grasses.
Originally conceived as a single long panel, the work evolved into five ‘portable’ panels so it could be created at Caitlin’s studio in Woodford, in the Blue Mountains.
Each panel can be viewed independently, but together they form an integrated story, flowing from one to the next. While the overall shape forms an oblong, the inner edges are deliberately irregular, creating intentional negative space between the panels.The garden theme is expressed in abstract form. It begins sombrely with quiet earth tones representing rocks and soil, moving into brighter, more vibrant panels that suggest flowers in full bloom, before lifting into a hopeful, luminous sky in the final, uppermost panel.
Robyn FitzRoy, Major Mitchell
“It doesn’t matter what you choose to do as long as you DO!”
BHAG - BIG HAIRY AUDACIOUS GOALS
When asked about future projects, Robyn subscribes to the BHAG philosophy: Big Hairy Audacious Goals!
She dreams of large-scale, multimedia installations integrating light, fabric, fibre optics, and smalti, works that command a room and create dialogue between material and space.
Beyond the studio, Robyn fuels her creativity through constant engagement with art, whether exploring local galleries or travelling abroad. She is particularly drawn to artists who work across forms and admires older women who push boundaries.
Recent encounters in South Korea left her captivated by artists like Lee Bul, Yoo Hyunmi, and Diana Scherer, whose “living fabrics” made from plant roots probe the relationship between nature and form.
Her community spirit is also evident in collaborative exhibitions such as Grounded, where her powerful body of work showcased her love of the Australian Landscape and Mixed Media.
Other Examples of Robyn's work
Blue Bonnett Parrot,
Completed at Koko Mosaico
AoA Level 5 : Exploring Genre
Landscape Study
AoA Level 8: Focus on Form
Relief Bust with Drape
