In 2025, Sara Lee Roberts undertook a residency at Giverny, where Monet lived and worked on his Nymphéas series, an experience that continues to inform her recent paintings. For Roberts, the real subject is light: colour interacts across the canvas to create a luminous, almost musical interplay of form and rhythm. Drawing on historical painting, particularly the ethereal light of Watteau, she works with intense presence and attention, seeking to convey the vital energy she experiences in the process of painting.

Sara Lee Roberts is a London-based artist whose practice engages with the history of painting and the experience of landscape. In 2025 she undertook a three-month residency at Monet’s Gardens, Giverny, following a five-month residency with the Royal Collection Trust in 2024. She has exhibited widely, including at the Royal Drawing School, the Rijksmuseum and Vivienne Roberts Projects. Her work is held in collections including Jesus College, Cambridge, the Unilever Collection and the Dumfries House Collection. She is a senior tutor and alumni tutor at the Royal Drawing School and was formerly a paintings conservator at the Hamilton Kerr Institute, Cambridge.