Izzie Beirne

Biography

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Izzie Beirne (b.1996) is a UK, London based artist from Newcastle Upon Tyne. Beirne studied her MFA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths University in London (2023) and her BA (Hons) Fine Art at Leeds Arts University (2019). Beirne was recipient of The Almacantar Award and studio residency (2023), Moosey residency (2026) and has been shortlisted for several other awards including The Mosaic Award (2025), Robert Walters Prize (2023) and has a residency with Good Eye Projects (2026-2027). Beirne has exhibited with galleries such as Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery (Blackburn), The Second Act (London), Gathering (London), Moosey (Norwich), Guts Gallery (London), Unit (London), OHSH Projects (London) and Plan X (Milan).

Beirne's work Beirne primarily works with oil painting, to explore themes of domesticity, violence and imbalances of power through a feminist lens. Film is deeply rooted in the process of Beirne’s practice, through her manipulation of cinematic imagery. Beirne utilises the film’s graphic, violent plot to work through feminist themes of sexual violence, societal ills and imbalances of power.

Bodies when painted are sliced and cropped, leaving frenzied hands and ghostly figures sweeping across the canvas. Beirne views this series of paintings as a way to build narrative, each piece adding to the larger puzzle at play. Depicted are the remnants of social settings; glasses discarded, doors left ajar with darkness beckoning and alluding to tropes in horror. Beirne’s painting technique plays into these narratives, using heavily blurred paint to create a dreamlike, nightmarish state. This distortion brings the paintings full circle, creating a painted lens through which scenes are viewed, harking back to the medium of cinema from which the paintings take reference.