ELEANOR WONG

Painter. Born UK (1975). Lives and works in Oxfordshire.

Eleanor Wong is a painter based in Oxfordshire whose work moves between the figurative and the abstract, working in the territory between the two. Working in oil, acrylic and mixed media, she makes paintings rooted in observation and personal narrative - then works to dismantle that narrative, letting the painting develop on its own terms before deciding, with care, how much to reveal.

Animals are at the heart of her practice. Not as subjects in the illustrative sense, but as presences - carriers of feeling, of wonder, of the particular kind of connection that dissolves the boundary between self and other. Her work reaches for that state: the wide-awake attention of a wild encounter, the openness we carry from childhood but don't always find.

Her work has been selected for the Royal Watercolour Society Open at Bankside Gallery, London, pre-selected for the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours, and shortlisted for the Visual Art Open UK and International Emerging Artist Awards.

She trained as an Illustrator (BA Hons, Manchester, 1998) and spent a decade working for clients including The Guardian, The Telegraph, the BBC and Waitrose Food Illustrated. That background - in finding the essential mark, the image that carries more than it states - remains present in how she works. She returned to Fine Art in 2008, and painting has been her primary practice since.

Artist Statement

I begin with observation - objects collected, dioramas built in the studio, drawings made from life. A narrative starts to form and I let it. Then I push it away.

That moment of resistance is important. I want the painting to develop beyond what I intended, to go somewhere I couldn't have planned. Each layer is a decision made, then reconsidered, then followed wherever it leads. The work finds its own logic before I return to it with any kind of judgement.

What I bring back is the question of how much to reveal. I work semi-abstractly by intention - not as a style but as a way of holding open the space between the painting and the person looking at it. The animal emerges, or is half-hidden, or is felt before it is found. I am interested in that edge: where recognition and sensation meet, where the viewer is free to find their own way in.

A painting is finished when it holds that balance - specific enough to be felt, and open enough to be completed by someone else.

Eleanor Wong, 2026

Exhibitions

2026: Oxfordshire Artweeks Open Studios

2023: RWS Royal Watercolour Society Open, Bankside Gallery, London

2022: Burford Art Gallery, Oxfordshire

2021: Shortlisted for Visual Art Open, UK & International Emerging Artist Awards

2021: Oxford Arts Collective, Oxfordshire

2021: Burford Art Gallery, Oxfordshire

2021: Oxfordshire Artweeks Open Studios

2020: Burford Art Gallery, Oxfordshire

2020: Oxfordshire Artweeks Open Studios

2019: Pre-selected for RI Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours

2019: Oxfordshire Artweeks Open Studios

2019: Fitch & Fellow Gallery, Thame, Oxfordshire

2019: Oxford Art Society Open, Cloister Gallery, Oxford

2018: Oxfordshire Artweeks Open Studios

2017: Oxfordshire Artweeks Open Studios

Illustration

Clients have included The Guardian, The Telegraph, the BBC and Waitrose Food Illustrated, culminating in a period represented by Folio Illustration Agency.

2006: Images 30, AOI The Best of British Contemporary Illustration, The Old Truman Brewery, London

Education

1998: BA (Hons) Illustration (with Animation), Manchester