Laura in the mirror, 2024

The starting point of this painting was a photograph of my sister’s reflection in a mirror, standing in a garden in India. Her shadowy silhouette melts into other amorphous forms representing the plants and architecture of the garden. I am interested in the idea of the garden as a curated or perfected version of nature — a space where we can escape our daily realities and enter into a place of idealised beauty. The framing of the garden in the mirror places us forever outside its walls, looking in.

Eleanor Purseglove was born in Birmingham, UK and lives and works in Melbourne. She studied Fine Art at Central St Martins, London and has worked extensively as a facilitating artist before returning to her painting practice significantly in recent years. She has exhibited in the UK and Australia and was the winner of the Brunswick Street Gallery Prize in the Fifty Squared Art Prize 2022.
Eleanor’s practice explores the spaces we escape to in search of an idealised leisure experience. 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 how we seek to connect with, adapt, control and perfect nature in a world that is increasingly removed from it.