Bissy Riva (b. 1995, Boston, MA) is a contemporary painter who lives and works between London, UK and Nairobi, Kenya. She received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in Textiles in 2018. She completed the Graduate Diploma course at the Royal College of Art in Fine Arts in 2023. Bissy has continued her studies at the Royal College of Art and is currently enrolled in the Painting MA programme.

Bissy’s practice draws inspiration from the natural world, using its diverse phenomena as a lens to reflect on the human condition. Her work engages with the systems and structures found across a range of environments to question and better understand patterns of human behaviour. Though rooted in abstraction, her paintings echo the rhythms, structures, and order inherent in nature. Each mark of colour informs the next, generating self-imposed rules that evolve into layered compositions of intricate patterns. Through bold shifts in colour and scale, Bissy seeks to convey the dynamic, often unseen energies that course through ecosystems, mirroring the natural world’s ebb and flow. Her work serves as a meditation on ecological mechanisms and our interconnected place within them.

Nationality: USA

Schools: Royal College of Art, London, UK