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Artist Bio

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Esther Thorniley-Walker originates from the North York Moors. She graduated from University of Brighton in 2018 with a Fine Art Painting degree and from University of York with a History of Art MA in 2020. Her art follows elusive thoughts and instinctive marks like a hardly discernible track that weaves and twists through deep forests and high waves of heather. This fusion of natural imagery with imagination and symbolism, explores the concept of wilderness and human relationship with the environment. Recent exhibitions include Painted Conversations III, Whitespace, Edinburgh (2024), As they’ve grown, so I stand, Look Again Project Space, Aberdeen (2023). Esther was the recipient of the 2023 Freelands Foundation Studio Fellowship at Gray’s School of Art, Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen.

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Artist Statement

 

My art manifests the sensation of being swept into the chaotic, disorienting movement of nature, which is as renewing as it is unnerving. In my art I portray the unforgiving beauty of nature’s ever-changing cycles of growth and mortality and how we take for granted this cyclical process of decay and regrowth. I am increasingly preoccupied with nature’s disrupted delicate balance between transience and permanence, and how nature is facing a precarious future as we destroy what can’t be brought back.

 

When painting I get caught up in the physicality of oil paint and the instinctive marks that overlap and merge, which for me echoes the sensation of following trails that only I can see in deep forests and high waves of heather. In my mind, my marks are conjuring areas of interconnecting roots and searching tangled branches wrestling for light and survival, which you must weave through to get past. This wild space is an expression of the mind, each gnarly branch a thread of thought, showing how you can get lost in imagination and mystery both physically and metaphorically when you step off the path.

 

I am also investigating through my art the concept of wildness and the two-way transfer of imagination and characteristics between landscape and inhabitant. Folklore, history and symbolism is passed down and projected onto nature, changing our perception of the environment into anthropomorphic entities, for instance the overpowering atmosphere and individual characteristics of different tree and plant species. These distinctive personalities that I convey make their precarious future particularly harrowing and poignant.

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EDUCATION

2019 –  20 History of Art Masters, University of York

2015 – 18 Fine Art Painting (BA Hons), University of Brighton 

2014 – 15 Art and Design Foundation, Northern School of Art / CCAD

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AWARDS

2023  Freelands Studio Fellowship recipient 

2021  Semi-Finalist for RBA Rome Scholarship

2020, Longlisted for John Moore Painting Prize 

2018, Longlisted for Bloomberg New Contemporaries

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CATALOGUES

2024 Naming the Thing

2023 As they've grown, so I stand 

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UPCOMING AND RECENT EXHIBITIONS

18th April – 26th May 2024, Naming the Thing, Group Show, Freelands Foundation, Regent's Park Road, London 

16th – 22nd February 2024, Painted Conversations, Collaborative show, Whitespace, Edinburgh.  

14th – 17th December 2023, ‘As they’ve grown, so I stand’, Solo Show, Look Again Project Space, Aberdeen

 

PAST EXHIBITIONS

 

2021 Waste Beyond, Waste Below, Kinnaird House, Pall Mall, London.

2021 RBA Rising Stars, Group Show, the Royal Over-Seas League, Mayfair, London.

2018 BFAP, University of Brighton, Brighton.

2018 Reverie, Edward Street, Brighton.

2017 Material Practices: Painting and Printmaking, Hove Museum & Art Gallery, Hove.

2016 In-between, University of Brighton, Brighton.

 

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