Georgia Mallin is a figurative painter who works mainly in oil and drawing, with portraiture at the centre of her practice. Born and raised in London, she read English and Spanish at Oxford, graduating with a First, before committing to art. That literary training stayed with her: she is drawn to narrative and storytelling, and often takes a story, a poem or a work of art history as the starting point for a painting.
Her foundation is observational. She trained rigorously in drawing and painting from life on the Diploma in Portraiture at the Heatherley School of Fine Art, where she was awarded the Daphne Todd Portrait Prize in 2018, and she describes making a painting from life as an act of paying attention, with an emphasis on accuracy, draughtsmanship and the fall of light. As a portraitist she works not only for likeness but for psychological insight, for something of the complexity of the person in front of her.
At ESOP she developed a second strand alongside that discipline, exploring how imagination, memory and feeling can become the starting point for an image rather than direct observation alone. It was here, she has said, that she found “a contemporary frame of reference” for the traditional skills she had spent years building, and where her artistic voice developed.
Alongside her own painting she works to commission, for private clients and for the theatre. What she brings to ESOP is the thing at the root of all good portraiture: sustained, patient looking, and the command to turn what is seen into a painting.
Georgia Mallin lives and works in London. BA English and Spanish (First Class), University of Oxford; Diploma in Portraiture, Heatherley School of Fine Art.
Curriculum Vitae
Education
Diploma in Portraiture, Heatherley School of Fine Art, 2017 to 2019
BA English and Spanish (First Class Honours), University of Oxford
Prizes and Awards
Daphne Todd Portrait Prize, 2018
ESOP Newman Young Artist Scholarship, 2019 to 2020
Selected Exhibitions and Appearances
Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year, Series 7, 2020
In The Studio, Mall Galleries, London, 2019
The Painting Year 2, graduate exhibition, The Essential School of Painting
Commissions
Bespoke portrait and figurative work for private clients and for the theatre.
For more of her work, visit georgiamallin.com