Nicola Bealing is based in Cornwall and represented by Matt’s Gallery in London. 

She studied at Hertfordshire College of Art (1983-4) and the Byam Shaw School of Art, London (1984-87).

With roots in Northern Europe and a childhood in Southeast Asia, Bealing enthusiastically harnesses an outsider’s perspective. A sense of not-quite-belonging informs how she sees the world and reimagines cultural narratives. It works both as a lens to scrutinise and a thematic thread running through her practice.

She creates unstable worlds where beauty, mischief and menace collide. Often drawing on history, folklore and myth, she revisits narratives through surreal shifts that thoroughly mess with conventional interpretation.

Working across painting and installation, she builds visually seductive surfaces through gesture, mark-making and colour. This initial come-hither allure is strategic: it acts as the gateway to deeper and darker places.  Figures flip between comedy and catastrophe, scenes slip from absurd to unsettling. The viewer is beckoned into a beguiling space of instability.

A feminist perspective underpins her practice, less as an explicit statement than a natural, consistently assumed position, shaping the gaze, humour and critique. With a dark wit and a strong sense of narrative, her work disturbs and challenges.

Recent exhibitions include : ‘Miserable Sinners’ ,Exeter Phoenix (2026); ‘Poor Form’, Sid Motion, London (2026); ‘Undersea’ Hastings Contemporary (2025); ‘Dead-man’s Fingers’ and ‘Sea’, Newlyn Art Gallery (2024); Exeter Contemporary Open, Exeter Phoenix (2024); ‘The Borough’ and ‘Dead-man’s Fingers’, Matt’s Gallery, London (2023); ‘Group Portrait’ Philida Reid, London (2023); ‘Come to Sunny Prestatyn’ Arcade Campfa Cardiff (2023); The John Moore’s Prize for Painting, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (2021); ‘3 Acts and 7 Scenes’ Salisbury Arts Centre (2020); ‘Bodies in Space’, Mirror, Plymouth(2021); ‘

Nicola Bealing was a recipient of the Bryan Robertson Trust Award in 2021.

Her work is held in the Arts Council Collection, the British Museum Permanent Collection of Prints and Drawings, The Foundling Museum, The Unilever Collection and The Jerwood Contemporary Collection amongst others.