Nicola Bealing: Miserable Sinners

Miserable Sinners is a recent body of work based on the seven deadly sins by Cornwall-based painter and printmaker Nicola Bealing. Luminous and dreamlike, laced with dark humour, and pulsing with surreal unease, Bealing’s predominantly figurative work regularly draws on history, folklore and myth, which are reimagined through her own unique lens. Her paintings are populated by human figures, animals, mythical creatures, and other exotic chimeras. They might cavort, loll, squabble, or leer; sometimes floating in isolation, at other times gathered together in demented, maximalist scenes. Each of the works in Miserable Sinners is titled after one of the seven deadly sins of early Roman Catholic theology – lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and vanity (or pride). Taking inspiration from, if not direct pictorial reference to, art historical precedents such as the C16th cycles painted by Hieronymus Bosch and Jacob de Backers, Bealing reinterprets what these might mean from a contemporary, avowedly atheist perspective. Website Nicola Bealing is represented by Matt’s Gallery, London Exhibition Preview Sat 04 July, 3pm – 5pm, free Artists Talk Join the artist as she discusses the exhibition and her wider practice in an informal walk through the galleries. Sat 15 Aug, 2pm