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Estelle Simpson

Estelle Simpson (b. 2001, Leeds) is a painter, writer and curator who lives and works in South London.
In smooth, careful oils, Simpson shifts between scales—intimate animal studies sit alongside figures portrayed in life size. Her process is intentionally internal, eschewing sitters, life models and photographs to paint entirely from her mind’s eye.

Under Simpson’s delicate brush, human, animal and object are at once alive: curtains bristle in windowless rooms; the scarlet velvets of an armchair breathe as deeply as the girls hunched atop their cushions. Drawing from the rich histories of Surrealist and Symbolist art, and that of balletic performance, Simpson treats everyday minutiae with reverence. A kitten’s paw, a compact mirror, an untied bow: we glimpse motifs as they slide backstage, only to reappear on another canvas; costume-changed and dancing a new routine. With slender crops and flickering spotlights, Simpson’s compositions set an otherworldly stage for the pleasures and struggles we once thought we knew. Simpson graduated from Camberwell College of Arts, London, in 2023, and was selected for that year’s inaugural New Blood Emerging Art Prize showcase at Saatchi Gallery. She has since exhibited across the capital, including a solo survey at Tache Gallery and group shows at Norito Gallery, Outhouse Gallery and Southwark Park Galleries. Simpson is co-founder of the curatorial collective Disrupting Mythologies, whose projects include HEIST at SET Woolwich, and has recently released her first publication in collaboration with South London art bookmakers Shoe Box.

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‘Soft Touch’
By Estelle Simpson
Oil on canvas
55x70cm
2025

'Cardinal Blues'
By Estelle Simpson
Oil on linen
55x70cm
2025

‘Swan’
By Estelle Simpson
Oil on canvas
15x10cm
2025

Nestle further into the coat. Truth be told, I am a glutton for the outdoors, even in repugnant depths of winter, I should find a magical, melancholic moment. In the park, the lake glitters and so does the silver of cans and wrappers. Relieved to have somewhere to go, somewhere to be enlivened by the simple pleasure of watching another being. It is estranged from my conscience, and my mind wanders. If I had walked the glazed layer of the lake beyond my viewing place, as I was tempted to, would I too be able to resist the icy assault of the water. I imagined floating, unchallenged by ice, framed eerily, yet romantically, in an unfrozen section of water. Just like the swan, I imagined performing with ease through the stabbing chill of the lake’s surface. Or, had I levitated in a ghostly fashion, perhaps the bitter plane would have licked only my coat, soaking the ends of synthetic fibres-I liked to picture these fake memories-and sprinkled by water droplets, finally decorating my fur lining like glass splinters. And I would imagine the water not as transparent but as an ancient mirror. In its mirror maze of ripples, recollections are lost and found, then distorted and illuminated in its currents. That is how I recall shifting tales. Between my fine, soft acrylic coat strands and the swan’s fringed plumes of its feathered armour, I blur two entities into one muse. Fluttering and quivering with emotion, frost bitten, encased. But this anatomy is preserved with a ribbon; a static bow on a swan’s body only exists as an image in my mind, of course. I didn’t really want to invade its territory.