Coral Churchill
Degree: BA Fine Art - Painting
University: Central Saint Martins
Graduation Year: 2007
New Blood Art Commentary
Coral Churchill’s paintings are thresholds. They enter into relationship with natural form, merging internal and external states into a single, shimmering field.
Prismatic light binds the image like psyche binds memory: fragile, iridescent, precise. The horizon appears again and again - a symbolic line between the known and the unknowable, drawn and redrawn, as if to ask: if I name this edge, will I be safe?
What Coral is doing - though I suspect she does not fully claim it - is alchemical. These are not paintings about the natural world. These are paintings that do something to it. They take what is lived and unspoken and re-present it in form that the psyche can recognise. They are metabolising chaos into coherence.
The work holds a cellular longing for union - a merging instinct, shaped and contained. Each image echoes the moment just before language arrives, when sensation is whole, pattern is meaning, and colour is emotion in its first, unbroken form.
Artist Statement
Coral Churchill’s paintings takes inspiration from natural forms reflecting cloud, land and seascapes and merging biomorphic structures and forms. The horizon is a connecting and repeating point, with prismatic light a central focus to create otherworldly spaces. Images are interlinked, sampling different references from natural forms, photography and botanical illustration. The paintings focus colour into chromatic gradients, echoing the refracted light that rounds each day in sunrises and sunsets. Her work is centred in studies of nature, from the iridescence of jewel-like insects to deep sea creatures and their strange neon bioluminescent lights.
Solo Exhibitions
(2013) Solo Show, The Muse, London
Group Exhibitions
(2025) Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours Exhibition, Mall Galleries, London
(2024) Trip the Light, The Muse, London
(2024) 20 Years of The Muse, The Muse, London
(2021) Lightwaves, The Muse, London
(2018) A 15 Year Retrospective, The Muse, London
(2016) AiR Retrospective and Auctio, The Muse, London
(2015) Channelling, Institution of Art and Ideas, Hay on Wye
(2015) Heads, Studio One Gallery, London
(2013) PechaKucha: RA Summer Exhibition, Sketch, London
(2013) Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, RA, London
(2013) AIR Residency, The Muse, London
(2012) Orchestrated, Studio One Gallery, London
(2012) Art Alive, Kingly Court, London
(2012) The Costume Store, UAL, London
(2011) Wild Life, We Are Arts Gallery, London
(2011) Exhibition #2, No Soul For Sale, London
(2010) 400 Women, Shoreditch Town Hall, London
(2010) The Trouble with Women, Menier Gallery, London
(2010) Mandrillus Sphinx, Central Saint Martins, London
(2010) Some You Win, Some Deleuze, Art space, London
(2009) Art Market, Guest Projects, London
(2009) One or Several Wolves, Kingsgate Gallery, London
(2009) Contemporary Art Projects, Stand, London Art Fair
(2009) Morphology, Pop-Up Gallery Notting Hill, London
(2009) Art@10GS Gallery, Mayfair, London
(2008) Martian Hearts, Contemporary Art Projects, London
(2008) Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, RA, London
(2008) '00 Nature, Contemporary Art Projects, London
(2008) Urban Art Show, The Old Cinema, London
(2008) Start Your Collection, CAProjects, London
(2008) It's Not Over Yet, Etc Gallery, London
(2007) Scratch Exhibition, HQ Building, Dublin
(2007) Morphologic, Central Saint Martins, London
(2007) Spring Exhibition, The Hogarth, London
(2007) Volume Magazine Exhibition, AKA, London
(2007) Central Saint Martins, Degree Show, London
Competitions, Prizes & Awards
(2013) Artist in Residence, The Muse, London
