HOLIDAY

Eleanor Purseglove

11–28 MAY 2023

Eleanor Purseglove's debut solo show, Holiday, looks at the spaces that we escape to in search of an idealised leisure experience. As curated or perfected versions of nature, the swimming pools and gardens of her paintings explore the aesthetic delights of these spaces alongside their contradictions, tensions and disappointments.

Purseglove’s painting process is intuitive and largely unplanned. Images drawn from promotional material, holiday blogs or social media posts typically provide a subject and basic structure. The specifics of those images quickly fall away as the composition opens out into a more dreamlike space, where abstract and representational elements contradict and trip each other up.

The paintings at once reflect indulgence in the sensory pleasures that these places of escapism bring, removed from daily realities, while retaining the sense of implacable yearning which they are born out of. The archways through which we glimpse gardens and pools offer sightlines into a world which remains just out of reach.

Eleanor Purseglove studied Fine Art at Central St Martins, London and has worked extensively as a facilitating artist before returning to her painting practice in a significant way in recent years. She is the winner of the Brunswick Street Gallery Prize in the Fifty Squared Art Prize 2022 at BSG, Holiday a direct result of that award.