Miranda Donovan paints walls. Fragments of the city, formed of fading layers, textures and colours which speak of histories collapsed on a surface. They frame the road less travelled, walls once bright with paint now perhaps overlooked on our way out of town. Every piece is rendered in exquisite photorealistic detail, forged in her Willesden Junction studio, where she developed a unique process of building up acrylic and oil over building materials mixed with poIymers.

 

Such a style of painting combines techniques of the construction trade with notes of Surrealism and Street Art to evoke her beautiful urban landscapes, and landed her instant success after graduating from City and Guilds in 2005. Nick Woolff was one of the first to recognise her to be ‘pulling away at the sides’ of what contemporary painting was then all about. Within a year, she was picked up by Banksy’s former agent Lazarides Gallery, and has featured in several prominent art galleries, major auction houses and exhibitions ever since. As a formidable contemporary painter, she challenges the notion that opposites are unrelated, bridging together public and private, urban and rural, order and chaos, beauty and decay.

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Donovan’s works are no stranger to the established rostra of art world names, exhibiting with Christie’s, Frieze and Sotheby’s New York, where she was featured as a Highlight of Contemporary Street Art in 2021. With such an impressive list of public and private collectors under her belt (Soho House, House of Koko, Groucho Club, Frank Cohen, the Mugrabis, Mark Hix, Stephen Webster and the Khalili brothers to name a few), and an equally enviable list of co-exhibitors (Ai Wei Wei, David Hockney, Anthony Gormley, Grayson Perry, Maggie Hambling and Julian Opie), she returned to Woolff Gallery in May 2024 with a collection of never-before-seen works. Click on the link below for more info. 

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GENESIS - May 2024