Ramsden’s paintings engage with the materiality and histories of the medium and its relationship to figuration and abstraction. Drawing on both long-established and contemporary ways of seeing, including those shaped by new technology, she builds up and excavates layers of marks and pigment. Through their play of texture, surface and scale, the works insist on their physicality as objects rather than images. Ramsden has described painting as ‘thinking with the hand’; where depiction appears in her work, it remains provisional, with her marks retaining a measure of autonomy as pigment on a support.
Mary Ramsden (b. 1984, North Yorkshire, United Kingdom) lives and works in London and North Yorkshire.
Selected solo exhibitions include Pilar Corrias, London (2024, 2022, 2019, 2017, 2015); Wentrup, Berlin (2025, 2022, 2021); and The Aspen Art Museum, Aspen (2016). Selected group exhibitions include the Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh (2026); Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas (2025); Mead Gallery, Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry (2023); Tate Britain, London (2021, 2015); Victoria Miro, London (2018); and Whitechapel Gallery, London (2015). Her work is held in public collections including Tate, London; the Government Art Collection, London; the Pérez Art Museum, Miami; the Margulies Collection, Miami; the Fiorucci Art Trust, London; and The George Economou Collection, Athens.