Ishbel Myerscough, Iggy, 2022
£ 7,500
Biography
ISHBEL MYERSCOUGH (b 1968)
Ishbel Myerscough is recognised for her highly detailed and meticulously observed portrayal of her subject matter, which over the past three decades has primarily included herself, her close friend and fellow artist Chantal Joffe, and their families. Myerscough combines a focused study of youth and coming-of-age with adult experiences of parenthood, desire and bereavement, evoking the complex cycle of human experience.
Myerscough studied at Glasgow and the Slade Schools of Art, and works in London. In 1995 she won the National Portrait Gallery’s annual BP Portrait Award competition and as a result was commissioned to paint Helen Mirren’s portrait for the collection and subsequently Sir Willard White. Her portrait Two Girls (1991), was displayed in the exhibition Self at the Turner Contemporary, Margate, UK in 2015 and at the National Portrait Gallery, London, until November 2016. Her work was presented in a joint display Friendship Portraits: Chantal Joffe and Ishbel Myerscough at the National Portrait Gallery in 2015, capturing their very particular artistic collaboration; and was included in the exhibitions Only Connect, Royal Academy of Arts, Keeper’s House, London; and Relating Narratives – A Common World of Women, The Horse Hospital, London, 2018.
