Raphaella Beatrice Spence was born in London in 1978. When she was still a babyher family moved to France where she spent the first eight years of her life. In 1986 Spence returned to London. Here her interest in art began to emerge bybeing exposed to the many architectural projects by her father Milton John ErwinSpence and her grandfather, Sir Basil Spence (Coventry Cathedral, Rome BritishEmbassy, New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Hyde Park Barracks / Tower). Before the birth of architectural design and rendering software, significant projectswere often represented with very realistic and detailed handmade drawings, forwhich the Spence Office had a particularly strong reputation. These beautifulalmost photo real representations realized in pencil and watercolour, were the firstsource of inspiration for Raphaella, who quickly started to think about figurate art interms of connections between reality, photography and painting. At the age of twelve Raphaella’s family decided to move permanently to Todi(Italy) where her parents bought and restored a medieval mill immersed in theUmbrian countryside. Here began a very formative period of the artist's life whospent most of her days learning and practicing different painting technics taughtby her father Milton, while in parallel completing her studies at the St. George'sBritish International School in Rome. Finished her studies she focused full time on oilpainting creating a first series of works depicting landscapes inspired by views ofthe Umbrian countryside. In 1999 Spence held her first solo exhibition in Italy and in 2003, at the age oftwenty-four, she exhibited in New York in her first solo show at the Louis K. MeiselGallery, a gallery with whom she still exhibits. During that same year Spence also participated in the exhibition entitled"Iperrealisti", her first major museum exhibition at the Chiostro del Bramante in Rome,curated by Gianni Mercurio, where she was commissioned by the American carmanufacturer DaimlerChrysler Group to paint a work which represented the PTCruiser, their latest car on the market. In 2004, Spence moved to New York where she worked on a series of paintingsinspired by cityscapes of the major American cities. Also from this period were agroup of works based on aerial photography imaginary. As the only working femaleartist in the hyperrealism scene, Spence exhibited with leading artists of the currentsuch as Richard Estes, Chuck Close, Don Eddy, Ralph Goings, and RobertCottingham. In 2005 she returned to Italy and worked on several large paintings inspired bydisturbing social scenes such as violence among football fans and mass animalslaughter. A selection of these works were exhibited at the Musei Capitolini in Rome,donated to the UNHCR and auctioned by Sotheby's and Christie's. Between 2003 and 2008 Spence participated with other major hyperrealist artists ina series of projects aiming at representing particular visual aspects of differentcities. These assignments were funded by American and European collectors andresulted in the "Prague Project" in 2003, the "Zurich Project" in 2007, the "Monte CarloProject" in 2008, the “Vegas Project” in 2008, and the "Beijing Project" also in 2008.As of particular relevance, Spence painted different aerial views of Monte Carloduring the Formula One Grand Prix and in the course of the Chinese OlympicGames captured several contrasting aspects between modern Beijing and the oldForbidden City. The paintings created in these projects were subsequently exhibitedat the Louis K. Meisel Gallery in New York. Starting in 2012, Spence took part in an international museum tour that began atthe Kunsthalle Tübingen Museum in Germany and continued with other 13 venuesin international museums such as the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum (Spain), theBirmingham Museum and Art Gallery (England), the New Orleans Museum Of Art,(U.S.A.), the Oklahoma City Museum Of Art (U.S.A.), the Museo De Bellas Artes DeBilbao (Spain), the Kunsthal Museum Rotterdam (Netherlands), the Tampa MuseumOf Art (U.S.A). Between 2018 and 2019 Raphaella took part in a travelling exhibition onhyperrealism at the prestigious CCBB Museums in Brazil, (Centro Cultural Banco doBrasil). The first venue in 2018 was held in San Paolo and in 2019 the exhibition wentto Brasilia to then move on to the final destination in 2019-2020 at the headquartersof the CCBB Museum in Rio de Janeiro. These exhibitions reached almost a millionvisitors. In 2022 Spence launched her new series of works focusing on paintings depictingunder water scenes of marine pollution, in particular plastic and packaging waste.In order to create these images she does underwater marine photography using anextremely high resolution digital camera. This new series of works was presented forthe first time at the Museo Nacional Thyssen Bornemisza in Madrid in October 2022and are now part of the museum’s permanent collection. In 2024 Raphaella Spence will exhibit a selection of her new marine waste series atthe Parrish Art Museum in New York. Currently Spence is working on a retrospective of her paintings for a privatecollection. This body of works will be permanently exhibited at the collector’sfoundation.