Yellow is for Candour

Linda Marrinon emerged in the 1980s with paintings that challenged neoclassical tropes with a mixture of wit, irony, pathos and feminist critique. In the 1990s, she began making terracotta works that experimented with the sculptural languages of the 19th-century, in particular busts and reclining nudes. Like her paintings, these objects combine high and low culture, and have been described as anti-heroic and anti-monumental.

The art historian Chris McAuliffe has explained Marrinon’s early parody of historical art as “impudent, disrespectful but ultimately determined to identify what of value remains in art, and to sustain it”. This has proved an ongoing focus of Marrinon’s practice, which is characterised by a commitment to art motivated by its making.

In 2001, Marrinon undertook postgraduate study in the techniques and conventions of 19th-century figurative sculpture. From 2006, she focused her practice exclusively on sculpture, developing an expansive body of figurative works in plaster, terracotta and bronze. In 2026, she returns to painting for the first time in two decades, bringing a renewed perspective to a medium that has been integral to her practice since its beginnings.

In their treatment of the figure, these new paintings reveal a close affinity with her sculptural works, in moments resembling painted portraits of the very objects that have occupied her practice for the past 20 years.