The body is at the centre of everything I do. As a massage therapist, I work with bodies every day, listening to what they carry, what they hold, and what they need. As an artist, I have spent years exploring that same terrain through paint, through drawing, and through the act of modelling myself.

My artist name is CM Robertina, taken from my full first names, Cecilia Maria Robertina. It is the name under which I make, exhibit, and show work that is deeply personal, sometimes intense, and always rooted in lived experience.

My paintings explore the tension between the relatively fixed form of the body and the shifting nature of emotion, the way our most intense feelings find expression on and through the physical self. In my studies of female nudes, form is overtaken by an abstract wash of shapes and colours, etched on the field of emotional experience.

My work is compelling and engaging, sometimes intense and dark, at other times explosive and brightly coloured. My engagement with what it means to be fully human is always deeply personal. In recent years, my own experience of breast cancer has added a new and quietly powerful layer to that exploration, a deepened awareness of the body's vulnerability, its resilience, and the marks that life leaves upon it.

I work from my studio in Easingwold, next to my massage therapy treatment room. The two practices are closer than they might appear, both begin with the same act of listening carefully to what the body is expressing.

LIFE MODELLING

Alongside my painting practice, I work as a professional life model, posing for life drawing groups and artists across North Yorkshire and West Yorkshire. For me, modelling is a continuation of my artistic practice by other means. It is a way of bringing my own body into the work, rather than simply depicting others.

I believe in natural beauty, in the extraordinary ordinariness of the unposed human form, and in the power of nakedness to strip away the social identities we wear. For me, life modelling is not about bravery, it is about presence. About communicating, with nothing but the body itself, this is who I am.

In September 2025, I was interviewed by The Guardian as one of five life models speaking about the experience of posing nude, what it means, what it gives, and why it matters. I spoke about rediscovering my body in my 50s, the freedom that comes with modelling, and how I have continued to pose following my breast cancer diagnosis and surgery, carrying my scars openly, and finding that empowering.

You can read the full interview at the guardian.com