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 in a significant way 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 the ways we seek to connect with, adapt, control and perfect nature in a world that is increasingly removed from it.
Established in 2021, the National Emerging Art Prize was created to provide an annual, highly visible national platform to identify, promote and support the most promising emerging visual and ceramic artists in Australia.