Ellie MacGarry

Ellie MacGarry (b.1991) lives and works in London, UK. She has a BA in Fine Art from the University of Leeds and an MFA in Painting at the Slade School of Fine Art for which she received a Felix Slade scholarship and the Melville Nettleship Prize. Recent exhibitions include Seem both so distant and so close at Warbling (2025), XXS at Brintz County Gallery (2025), Echo at Cedric Bardawil (solo, 2024), Drawing Biennial at Drawing Room (2024), Stage Effects at Kate MacGarry (2022), CUBITT 30 at Victoria Miro (2022) and Disappearing Act at Steve Turner (solo, 2021). 

Ellie MacGarry is a British painter whose work explores intimacy, gesture, and the body with sensitivity and quiet power. Her works consider connection, distance and touch; often featuring cropped, close-up views that verge on abstraction, they draw attention to texture, light, and the charged space between bodies and objects. Using repeated motifs, most notably the hand, she explores the powerful way in which we communicate with our bodies. Clothing, pockets and windows become boundaried spaces in her paintings, with openings and layers acting as opportunities for concealment or touch.