Nanci Byrne

Toying with misdirection, movement and ambience, Nanci creates ornate paintings that challenge the boundaries of what is meant by ‘decorative’. Soft shapes conceal disquieting atmospheres, with surrealistic, dreamlike imagery unfurling and revealing itself. When viewing her pieces there is often the uneasy sense that they look back at you. Underpinning the whole of her practise is an exploration into the relentlessness of mother/womanhood, which she approaches with darkly comedic references, animal motifs, and the complex interplay of repetition, pattern and destruction.

As a trained textiles designer, Nanci is especially driven to explore the (sometimes negative) value placed on decorative art within a contemporary context. Her paintings draw inspiration from 17th cent. tapestries, and the Art & Crafts movement, but also her long-standing love of video games. She world builds on the canvas aided by literacy references such as A Room of One’s Own and The Yellow Wallpaper.