About
Biography
Abigail Burton is an oil painter from the South of England.
Born in 1997 in London, she grew up surrounded by her grandmother’s artwork and drew obsessively throughout her childhood and adolescence.
Abigail spent much of her childhood living in a houseboat on the Thames, before moving to East Sussex as a teenager. Long coastal walks and time spent on the river gave Abigail a strong appreciation of natural beauty.
Abigail’s second passion growing up was mathematics. She studied maths at The University of Oxford and completed a master’s degree there in 2019, before beginning a PhD at Imperial College London. However, over time her love of art overcame her love of maths, and she left maths in 2021 to pursue an art career.
Abigail is now studying classical realist art at the Barnes Atelier and works on looser plein air paintings outside of her studies, including as a Hudson River Fellow in 2024.
She is represented by the Riverside Gallery and the Fletcher & Seymour Gallery in Barnes, and has had numerous exhibitions internationally (one of her paintings has even been sent to the moon by NASA!) and about the UK.
Philosophy
Abigail’s interest in representational art arises from a desire to understand visual phenomena and her responses to them. She also explores symbolism and our associations to objects, how people naturally project personalities onto objects and build up stories around them. She is interested in our filtering methods and the imaginative play through which we process the confusion of reality, particularly in childhood. Abigail uses traditional methods and works from life whenever possible.
She believes that, in both maths and art, the most beautiful results are derived from reality, and that it’s necessary to understand the visual laws to break them well.
For Abigail, maths and art are not dissimilar in motivation or even in approach. They are both intensely creative pursuits which involve breaking down reality or the human experience through abstraction and simplification to find some fundamental truth.
Her mathematical background gives her a high regard for technical skill and she tries to approach any problem in art with the same combination of intuition, analysis and perseverance that she would approach a mathematical problem.
Education
2021/present – The Barnes Atelier – Core Studio Programme
2019/2021 – The London School of Geometry and Number Theory
2015/2019 – The University of Oxford – MMath Mathematics – First Class
Notable Exhibitions
Hudson River Fellowship Exhibition – 2024 – The Salmagundi Club, New York
The Almenara Art Prize – 2024 – Online
Green and Stone Summer Exhibition – 2024 – The Gallery at Green and Stone
Art in the Open – 2024 – Green Acres Gallery, Wexford
The Barnes Atelier Summer Exhibition – 2024 – Fletcher and Seymour Gallery
Hampstead Art Society– 2024 – Online
The Society of Women Artists – 2024 – The Mall Galleries
Chelsea Art Society – 2024 – Chelsea Old Town Hall
Works on Paper – 2024 – The Gallery at Green and Stone
Royal Institute of Oil Painters – 2023 – Mall Galleries
Discerning Eye – 2023 – Mall Galleries
Green and Stone Summer Exhibition – 2023 – The Gallery at Green and Stone
Art in the Open – 2023 – Green Acres Gallery, Wexford
Chelsea Art Society – 2023 – Chelsea Old Town Hall
Bath Society of Artists – 2023 – Victoria Art Gallery
The Royal Society of Portrait Painters – 2023 – Mall Galleries – ‘Highly Commended’ by the de Laszlo Foundation
Works on Paper – 2023 – The Gallery at Green and Stone
Society of Scottish Artists – 2022/23 – Royal Scottish Academy
Awards
Lunar Codex – A painting included in a time capsule placed by NASA on the moon – 2024
Art in the Open Quick Draw Competition (3rd place) – 2024
The Hudson River Fellowship – 2024
Highly Commended by the De Laszlo Foundation – 2023
Representation
Riverside Gallery – 2024/present – riversidegallery.co.uk
Fletcher & Seymour Gallery – 2024/present – fletcherandseymour.com