Raphaella Spence was born in 1978 in London, England, and is a hyperrealist painter whose current works consist of high-resolution digital camera images combined with freehand cityscape paintings. Spence and her family moved to France, where she spent the first eight years of her life. At the age of 12, she moved to Rome, Italy, with her family and in 1997, completed her studies at the St. George’s British International School in Rome. After graduating, Spence dedicated herself full-time to painting and concentrated on developing her technical skills. Influenced by views of the Umbrian countryside, she created her first series of works depicting landscapes. In 1999, Spence held her first solo exhibit in Italy and in 2003, exhibited in the United States at the Bernarducci Meisel Gallery in New York. In 2004, she moved to New York where she worked on a series of paintings inspired by cityscapes of the major American cities. As the only working female artist in the hyperrealism scene, Spence exhibited with leading artists such as Richard Estes, Chuck Close, Don Eddy, Ralph Goings and Robert Cottingham. Since then, her paintings have been included in numerous group survey exhibitions and has received critical recognition for her work in widely circulated newspapers and magazines.