Matilda Harrison Sold at Auction Prices

Matilda Harrison was born in Dorset and moved to London in the 1980s to study at St Martin’s School of Art. She has worked as an illustrator, principally in book publishing and completes private portrait commissions as well as her own paintings which she shows with a collective of artists in North London near her studio.

Matilda’s work has a persistent narrative thread. Recent work is born out of the memory of the quiet horror of reading fairy tales as a child and inspired by Victorian portrait photography and their subject’s frozen gaze. These portraits offer elliptical views of fairy tales with clues as to the action glimpsed out of the corner of your eye.

The series too plays with scale as giant birds, dogs and beetles, much beloved as painting subjects are allowed to share centre stage for the first time.

Reminiscent of folk art, Matilda’s painting however is not naïve in craft; influences are filtered through a sophisticated 21st century eye. With acute draughtsmanship, a passion for pattern and meticulous detail Matilda whispers her stories for the viewer to decode.

Exhibitions

Matilda will be exhibiting with Hybrid at the Affordable Art Fair in Battersea 2014.