About

Olivia Hawkswell, a 23-year-old painter based in Liverpool, creates vibrant oil paintings inspired by her farming upbringing in North Yorkshire. Her work explores themes of nature, femininity and connection, reflecting on her personal journey of moving from the countryside to the city. Through evocative imagery including her signature goat and cowboy boot paintings, Olivia explores the challenges of navigating imposter syndrome and finding belonging in new, unfamiliar spaces, blending the lines between fiction and reality whilst infusing each work with a banal humour.

“I am an emerging artist having graduated from Liverpool John Moores with a BA in Fine Art. Originally from a farm in North Yorkshire, my rural upbringing has deeply influenced my practice. My work consists of vibrant, large scale figurative oil paintings, realised on a neon pink acrylic base accompanied by textural oil stick and oil pastel. Playful use of colour blurs fiction and reality, in artificial hues at odds with the natural environment or traditional palettes utilised in landscape and animal painting. Incorporating goats reflects my farming background where I developed my own personal connections with them as companions. In this environment I have reflected on dominant societal ideas of animals being perceived as commodities, and the ways in which their life and death are integrated into every day. This context continues to sustain my inquiry into the innate human desire for connections and encounters with animals albeit a relationship hindered by complexities of hierarchy and domestication; using the writings of feminist scholar Donna Haraway as guiding principle. My constant interrogation of the subject informs a research-based practice wholly applied to the act of painting, contributing to a developing practice encouraging experimentation, firmly committed to critical reflection.”