Olivia Irvine creates painted worlds that feel like memories, yet remain fictional. Working through colour, mark-making and the interplay of shapes, imagery emerges from abstract foundations and shifts between the familiar and the imagined. Her paintings often bring together people, objects and fragments of memory in ambiguous, theatrical settings. Working in oil and distemper, she creates surfaces that are both vigorous and delicate, giving the impression that the painted world might dissolve like a dream upon waking.

This painting combines oil-based and water-based paints to create a broken, dreamlike surface. A man in white, perhaps a marble statue, offers a woman a drink from a goblet in a formal garden at night. His costume and the theatrical setting lend the scene an ambiguity that could be either light-hearted or tragic.

Born in Kilwinning, Scotland, Olivia Irvine studied at Edinburgh College of Art and the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, later gaining an MA in European Fine Art from Winchester School of Art in Barcelona. She lives and works in Edinburgh. Recent exhibitions include Figment, a solo show at The Open Eye Gallery, Edinburgh (2026), Enclosed Spaces at Linlithgow Burgh Halls (2025) and Frontiers – Painting in Scotland Now at the Royal Scottish Academy (2024). Her awards include a Creative Scotland Open Fund Award and the Blackadder Houston Mid-career Travel Award (2025).