Jennifer Nieuwland
Strange Vessels
Through 30 November 2026
Human experiences are complex and often made up of contradictions, paradoxes and tensions, we are never just feeling one thing.
Jennifer Nieuwland invites viewers to understand the process of transformation as being both psychological and bodily. In Strange Vessels, anatomy slips into something unfamiliar. Limbs dissolve, cavities open, surfaces stretch. The body is suspended between recognition and absurdity.
What distinguishes Nieuwland’s work is her ability to convert paint into sensation itself. With fluid shapes and atmospheric, painterly fields, Nieuwland’s surreal visual style conveys the vulnerability of self-discovery.
Oil on canvas
96 x 80 cm
Oil, acrylic and clay on canvas
32 x 27 x 5 cm
Oil on Arches paper
31 x 41 cm
Oil on canvas
70 x 85 cm
A lightbulb moment for me was realising how form, colour, shape and mark could embody meaning, this truly opened up a world of possibilities for me.
Jennifer Nieuwland uses varied materials, such as sand and foams, along with tactile, layered surfaces. This creates a felt experience that pulls us into the intimate and visceral. Textured mark-making and material spilling off the canvas carry a sense of emotional weight made tangible.
Her compositions oscillate through states of tension and release. Some forms appear compressed or contained. For instance, the dislocated tongue trapped within a cage of bubblegum-coloured polyurethane in “Seeker” lures viewers in with associations of sweetness only to have those feelings complicated by the inorganic material’s capacity to mimic flesh.
Others seem to rupture outward, as in “Flare,” where waves of turquoise marks burst from a fleshy central form. The body is both an anatomical fragment and a celestial object. The wondrous nature of her luminous palette is met with the uncanny, ambiguous bodily form at the centre. The repeated painterly gestures spread across the surface like pulses of energy or emotional release. It is a moment where the composition turns into a space of eruption.
Foam clay and oil paint on canvas
37 x 33 cm
Acrylic and polyurethane on canvas
44 x 32 cm
Oil on Arches paper
23 x 31 cm
Oil on canvas
87 x 122 cm
Painting takes me back to a childlike state of freedom and instinct that allows me to approach my sometimes dark subject matter with humour and lightness.
Beneath uncanny fabricated skin and exaggerated corporeal forms, the artist creates a cartoonish artificiality that is both humorous and unsettling. In these moments, discomfort exists alongside beauty and playfulness beside anxiety. Her idiosyncratic painterly language echoes the tensions, paradoxes, and intricacies of embodied experience.
Rather than telling a specific story, Nieuwland’s paintings create spaces for rebirth. The familiar becomes strange. The strange becomes intimate. The intimate becomes beautiful. In these shifting internal landscapes, metamorphosis is an act of breaking free.
Oil and acrylic on paper
30 x 42 cm
About the Artist
Jennifer Nieuwland is a London-based painter whose practice centres on the body as a site of perception, memory, and emotional experience. Largely self-taught, she completed an MA in Fine Art at City and Guilds of London Art School in 2021.
Nieuwland explores the relationship between physical experience and inner psychological states. Using paint as both image and material, she examines how emotion can be held, transmitted, and made tangible through surface, texture, and colour. Her intuitive practice is shaped by an interest in embodiment, using layered compositions to reflect the complexities of lived and sensory experience.
Her work has been shown in exhibitions across United Kingdom. She was a finalist for the Ingram Prize in 2025 and has also been recognised by the John Moores Painting Prize and Jackson’s Open Painting Prize.
Artworks
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Jennifer Nieuwland Bloom (2026)
£900
Oil on Arches paper(h) 31 x 23 cm
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Jennifer Nieuwland Bow (2026)
£1,000
Oil on Arches paper(h) 31 x (w) 41 cm
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Jennifer Nieuwland Flare (2025)
£1,000
Oil and acrylic on paper(h) 30 x (w) 42 cm
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Jennifer Nieuwland Flutter (2026)
£4,500
Oil on canvas(h) 87 x (w) 122 cm
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Jennifer Nieuwland Purpureal Threshold (2024)
£4,000
Oil on canvas(h) 96 x (w) 80 cm
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Jennifer Nieuwland Seeker (2025)
£2,000
Acrylic and polyurethane on canvas(h) 44 x (w) 32 cm
-
Jennifer Nieuwland Seer (2025)
£3,500
Oil on canvas(h) 70 x (w) 85 cm
-
Jennifer Nieuwland Soar (2025)
£1,600
Foam clay and oil paint on canvas(h) 37 x (w) 33 cm
-
Jennifer Nieuwland Turbulent Waters (2025)
£1,800
Oil, acrylic and clay on canvas(h) 32 x (w) 27 cm x (d) 5 cm
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