Miranda Boulton

b. 1973, Cambridge, UK.

"My paintings are about the passing of time, they are Memento Mori, reminding us of our mortality and the transience of life. I paint flowers, alive, beautiful, decaying, dying, haunting, life affirming, poignant, reassuring. Always at the height of their beauty they fade away. They cover the monumental and the everyday. My grandfather was an artist, he died before I was born, my grandmother kept his studio the same as the day he died. As a child I use to sneak into his mysterious studio and imagine talking with him about his work. These conversations made me want to paint, to recapture something of him and make it present again.” – Miranda Boulton

For Miranda Boulton painting is an ongoing conversation between the past and the present. She is fascinated by Flower Paintings from Art History, having spent a great deal of time looking at paintings by Morandi, Winifred Nicholson, Manet, Rachel Ruysch and Mary Moser to name a few. She absorbs their work and follows their brushstrokes as if listening in on a conversation. Memories of their paintings are used as the starting point for her own process, searching for a space where she has touched on the feel and presence of a painting from the past. There is an essence of the original, an acknowledgement of a time, place and history all in the mix. Flowers remind us of the fleeting, transient nature of life.

Colours slide and slip around the surface, large sweeping gestures made by hand or brush sit next to layers of impasto paint and carefully painted details. Areas of soft powdery spray paint collide with hard built-up oil paint. The canvas is turned to destabilise and shift the composition, giving fresh perspective to the process.

Boulton thinks of painting as a time-based medium; layers of paint are like age rings on a tree, each holding memories of brush marks and integral to the finished piece. Each painting is an ongoing conversation between past and present, an exploration of new forms from old imagery and narratives.

Miranda Boulton is a contemporary British painter who lives and works in Cambridge, UK. She studied Art History at Sheffield Hallam University and at Turps Banana Art School in London.

Boulton’s solo exhibitions to date include: ‘Lost In The Middle’, Newhall Art Collection, Cambridge, (2012) and ‘Outside In’, Madame Lillies Gallery, London, (2011). She has also exhibited in two-person exhibitions including ‘Double Time’, Arthouse1, London, (2019) and ‘Off Line/On Line’, Studio 1.1, London, (2015).

Notable group exhibitions include: ‘Goddesses on Sea’, Lido Stores, Margate (2023), Hamptons Fine Art Fair, Cynthia Corbett Gallery, USA (2023), ‘The Goddesses’, Terrace Gallery, London, (2023), Expo Chicago, Cynthia Corbett Gallery, USA (2023), British Art Fair, Saatchi Gallery, London (2023), London Art Fair, (2022), ‘Inspire 2022’, D Contemporary, London (2022), ‘This Year’s Model’, (Part II), Studio 1.1, London, (2021) ‘This Year’s Model’, (Part III), Studio 1.1, London, (2021), Royal Academy Summer Exhibition (2016 & 2019), ING Discerning Eye (2021), Young Masters Autumn Exhibition 2022, Young Masters Invitational at the Exhibitionist Hotel (2023-24), and ‘Staged by Nature’, Glyndebourne (2023).

In 2021 she won the Jacksons Painting Prize. Boulton took part in a residency with The Bothy in Glasgow for project titled ‘A Painter and A Poet’ Eigg, Scotland, in 2018, and in 2021 she was artist in residence at renowned department store Liberty London.
Miranda Boulton’s work in many private collections in the UK and internationally.

Miranda Boulton is represented internationally by Cynthia Corbett Gallery.

PBMC 24: MIRANDA BOULTON