Lizzie Riches, 'Black-faced Sheep', 1993, oil on canvas

'Black-faced Sheep' by Lizzie Riches (British, b. 1950).

Oil on canvas.

64 cm x 49.4 cm

74.4 cm x 60 cm with frame

Lizzie Riches (b. 1950, East London) is a renowned British painter known for her distinctive, dreamlike style that blends magical realism, detailed natural history, and Tudor-esque symbolism. Raised near Epping Forest, Riches developed an early, lifelong fascination with nature. Although she attended both the Camberwell School of Art and Goldsmiths College in the late 1960s, she quickly found herself out of sync with contemporary abstract trends and set out to cultivate her own idiosyncratic visual language instead.

While Riches spent years living in rural Suffolk painting local birds, plants, and insects, her scope gradually expanded to embrace broader surrealist landscapes, specifically focusing on exotic flora and fauna.