Peggi Kroll Roberts
Biography
Peggi Kroll depicts subject matter of her everyday life such as family, surrounding landscape and animals. "I love to paint my children when they’ll let me. I pay the kids $7.50 per hour for modeling." My paintings of children are not meant to be portraits, but you can’t help but get a likeness when the large masses are drawn correctly. . . It’s a challenge!"
This artist has a successful career as an illustrator, which means she is trained in the fundamentals of color, drawing and composition. In fine art, she combines her background in realism with impressionism and loves strong color and the capturing of special moments with "a minimum of brush work and a maximum of value. She works in both oil and watercolor and paints realistic places and people with a goal of capturing only the most important details, those which take the viewer into the story she wants to convey. She also paints floral still lifes and through them explores "interesting dark light patterns." By placing floral arrangements outdoors, she challenges herself with the handling of unpredictable light. Occasionally she paints a natural arrangement such as the one she used for her painting, "Pink Hedge Rose." Dark, almost muddy colors of the background reflect the smoke-filled air of a rose garden from recent wildfires in the Superstition Mountains.
Kroll was born in Canton, Ohio, was raised in Arizona, and now lives in Scottsdale with her husband, artist Ray Roberts, and their three young children. Interested in art from an early age, Kroll was encouraged by her mother who is a fashion illustrator. Kroll acquired her formal art education at the Art Center in Los Angeles, where she earned advanced standing and a scholarship.
A hobby of Krolls used to be flying. "I love to hang out at small airports." She had her private pilot’s license, something she gave up with the demands of raising family, but she is pleased to be living within three miles of the airport where she learned to fly. "Though I don’t fly anymore, I still have a deep love of aircraft and their abilities and freedom they provide.”
Of her painting titled "Parked at Scottsdale Airport," she writes: "This is an old plane and I loved the peaceful open ramp of Scottsdale Airport. The light also intrigued me with all of it bouncing around--so much ramp to reflect off of and the open sky."
Krolls painting trips are quite often an adventure, such as the one from which she did "Red Swimsuit." Going to a swim park called Big Splash in Montana, she took her easel and began painting her children. Then numerous other children gathered around saying, "Paint me, paint me." As a result, Kroll got many more paintings from this trip than she had anticipated.
Select Exhibitions
2019 Greenhorn Creek Pop Up Exhibition & Sale, Angels Camp, CA
2019 The Page Gallery, Camden, ME
2018 A Collector's Feast, American Legacy Fine Arts, Pasadena, CA
Press
2014 Interview with Savvy Painter
Awards and Honors
2018 Blackwell Prize for high achievement in plein air/observational painting A $10,000 honorarium and a residency at Gray Cottage in Newnan, Georgia
Press and Publications
Peggi Kroll-Roberts and Ray Roberts Featured in CAC Newsletter Summer 2020 Issue
Peggi Kroll-Roberts is an award-winning figurative painter, well-known for her sturdy renderings of bodies bathed in strong outdoor light and colour. Ray Roberts is an award-winning landscape painter, honoured for …
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