Artist Profile — Eleanor Purseglove
“The paintings in this collection all centre around small, manmade bodies of water. Figures appear wading, submerged or suggested only by an empty chair or discarded towel. They are places of calm, quiet reflection, suspended from daily life. There is an intimacy between the figures and the water that they are in commune with. In one sense the pools represent refuge, escape and sensory pleasure. I am also interested in the symbolism of water as a representation of the emotional body and as layers of the conscious and unconscious.”
Eleanor Purseglove was born in Birmingham, United Kingdom, and lives and works in Naarm / Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. She studied Fine Art at Central St Martins, London, and worked extensively as a facilitating artist before returning to her painting practice in a significant way in recent years. She has exhibited in the UK and Australia and was the winner of the Brunswick Street Gallery ‘Fifty Squared Art Prize’ in 2022.
Eleanor’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. Her practice explores the spaces we escape to in search of an idealised leisure experience. As curated or perfected versions of nature, the gardens and swimming pools of her paintings explore the aesthetic delights of these spaces alongside their contradictions, tensions and disappointments — she is interested in the ways we seek to connect with, adapt, control and perfect nature in a world that is increasingly removed from it.
