Rebecca Salter

Rebecca Salter’s practice sits between painting, printmaking and sculpture. She uses precise and repetitive mark-making to stain, scorch, or puncture her canvases, concerned more with creating a three-dimensional object than a painted surface. Working with a monochromatic palette on absorbent linen, Salter explores the rhythmic relationship between marked and unmarked space. Her works generate a sense of stillness, absorbing the viewer and providing an opportunity for focused reflection. 

Rebecca Salter (b. 1955) initially studied ceramics at Bristol Polytechnic. After being awarded a Leverhulme Scholarship to study at Kyoto City University of the Arts in Japan, Salter began to explore traditional Japanese woodblock printmaking. Her experiences in Japan altered the course of her artistic career, proving fundamental in developing her minimalist and multimedia practice. She has published two books on Japanese printmaking and, until 2016, was Associate Lecturer on the MA Printmaking Course at Camberwell College of Art, University of the Arts, London. Salter was awarded the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation residency twice, in 2003 and 2011. She became a Royal Academician in 2014 and was elected as Keeper of the Royal Academy in 2017. In 2019, Salter was elected president of the Royal Academy of Arts, becoming the first female President since the Academy was founded in 1768.

Salter has exhibited internationally, with a major retrospective into the light of things at the Yale Centre for British Art in 2011. Her work is in numerous public and private collections, including Tate; the British Museum; the Victoria & Albert Museum; and the Library of Congress, Washington DC. 

Salter lives and works in London.