Olivia Irvine : Figment
Olivia Irvine creates painted worlds that feel like memories, yet remain fictional. These figments of her imagination emerge from a meticulous engagement with the formal language of painting: colour, mark-making and the interplay of shapes. From these abstract foundations, imagery surfaces, evolves and sometimes vanishes, until certain forms are held in place. What is captured may feel surprising, strangely familiar or quietly unsettling.
Recurring motifs include cherished objects, family members and ancestors, childhood play, dining tables and picnics. These elements jostle for space in ambiguous environments - part recalled, part invented. Like actors and props on a mutable stage, they play out a narrative that is not fully rehearsed.
Working in oil paint and distemper (pigment bound with glue), Irvine balances the contrasting qualities of each medium. Vigorous, spontaneous strokes sit beside scraped and translucent passages and finely traced line. Though fixed on the canvas, this textural matrix feels transient - as if all might dissolve at any moment, much like a dream upon waking.
Olivia Irvine was born in Kilwinning, Scotland. She attended Edinburgh College of Art where she gained a BA Honours in Drawing and Painting and a Diploma in Postgraduate Studies. This was followed by a Spanish Government Scholarship for a year's study at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and, five years later, an MA in European Fine Art at Winchester School of Art in Barcelona.
Olivia paints from her studio in Edinburgh. She has taken part in various exhibitions; most recently, Enclosed Spaces, a solo show at Linlithgow Burgh Halls in 2025 and Frontiers - Painting in Scotland Now at the Royal Scottish Academy in 2024.
Residencies include the Hosking Houses Trust, Warwickshire in 2025 and Cill Rialaig, County Kerry in 2022. Recent awards include a Creative Scotland Open Fund Award, and the Blackadder Houston Mid-career Travel Award (for Argentina and Chile), both in 2025, and the W Gordon Smith and Jay Gordonsmith Prize and a Queen Elizabeth Anthony and Elizabeth Mellows Charitable Settlement Trust Award, both in 2022. Olivia recently retired from being a Teaching Fellow at the University of Edinburgh.