Rhiannon Rebecca Salisbury
I am a London-based painter working with oil, oil stick, oil pastel and pigment on canvas and repurposed Welsh slate. My practice explores material memory, landscape and transformation, with particular attention to the histories already carried by the surfaces I use.
In my recent slate paintings, the stone is more than a support. Its weight, fractures, edges and previous use shape the image from the beginning. I work responsively, allowing forms to emerge that suggest landscapes, chambers, flames, vessels, thresholds and apparitions. The paintings move between abstraction, artefact and imagined place.
My approach is informed by geological time, extraction histories and my Welsh family connections to coal and slate mining. I am interested in how material can hold traces of labour, shelter, damage and endurance, and how painting can bring those histories into contact with more personal experiences of motherhood, care and bodily change.
Rather than treating landscape as a fixed view, I approach it as something remembered, inherited and transformed. Through the meeting of paint and stone, I create works that feel both physical and uncertain: fragments of the earth that also operate as portals into interior, mythic and otherworldly spaces.
Lived Experience
My lived experience is shaped by motherhood, care, neurodiversity and a strong connection to Welsh family history. Becoming a mother changed the direction of my practice, bringing questions of bodily transformation, vulnerability, endurance and invisible labour into the work.
I also draw on my family’s connections to coal and slate mining in Wales. These histories have deepened my interest in materials that carry traces of labour, extraction, shelter and use. Working with repurposed Welsh slate allows me to connect personal inheritance with wider social and geological histories.
As an artist with ADHD, dyslexia and dyspraxia, I often work through intuition, repetition and physical engagement with materials. My process is responsive rather than predetermined, and I allow the surface to guide the development of each painting. These experiences inform a practice concerned with care, memory, transformation and the ways histories can remain embedded in bodies, landscapes and objects.
CV RHIANNON REBECCA SALISBURY
EDUCATION
2025 – 2026
MA Painting, Royal College of Art, London
2016 – 2018
Turps Banana Studio Programme, London
2015 – 2016
MA Fine Art, Chelsea College of Arts, London
AWARDS & SCHOLARSHIPS
Cass Art Prize, Shortlist, 2026
Basil H. Alkazzi Scholarship Award, Royal College of Art, 2025–26
Unit 1 Gallery Workshop Solo Residency Award, London, 2023
Overall Delphian Open Call Winner, Delphian Gallery, 2019
Darbyshire Prize for Emerging Artist, Turps Banana, 2018
John Hoyland Scholarship, Chelsea College of Arts, 2015
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
Allen Gallery 2027 (upcoming)
Matrescence
Unit 1 Gallery Workshop, London, 2023
Chthonia
Arusha Gallery, Edinburgh, 2022
Femininity
Delphian Gallery, London, 2021
Habitual Submission
Delphian Gallery, London, 2019
Rhiannon Salisbury: Darbyshire Prize Exhibition
Turps Banana x Darbyshire Ltd., London, 2018
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
LONDON WRITES ITSELF: LBF’s 2026 London art graduate discoveries, LBF Contemporary, London, 2026
RCA 2026: School of Arts & Humanities Show, MA Painting, London, 2026
Illuminated, Royal Society of Arts x AOAP Projects, RSA House, London, 2026
Shifting Realities, Hockney Gallery, Kensington, London, 2026
Mythic Manifest, Love Waxes Cold, 2025
POST//FUTURE, Saatchi Gallery, London, presented by Delphian Gallery, 2025
The Reactor Fundraiser, The Sunday Painter, London, 2024
Papier Vol. I & II, Delphian Gallery, France (2023) / Helsinki (2024)
Taking A Broom To The Wasps’ Nest, Pictorum Gallery, London, 2022
Dream Baby Dream, Fitzrovia Gallery, London, curated by Paint Talk, 2022
Global Song, Tang Contemporary, Hong Kong, 2022
L2022DON, Galleri Ismene, Norway, 2022
Antisocial Isolation, Saatchi Gallery, London, curated by Delphian Gallery, 2021
Origin, Delphian Gallery, London, 2021
Tangled in the Blue, Purslane Arts, London, 2021
House S1, Collective Ending, London, 2020
RESIDENCIES
Allen Gallery Resident, 2026 - 2027
Unit 1 Gallery Workshop Solo Residency, London, 2023
Clovermill Residency, Netherlands, 2022
Collective Ending, Inaugural Studio Member, London, 2019–20
Absent Minded Residency, Gaillac, France, 2019
Panorama Residency, Chelsea College of Arts, Guadalajara, Mexico, 2016
CURATION
The Eyes of the Night Creatures
Delphian Gallery x Artsy, curated by Rhiannon Salisbury, 2021
Ancient Deities
Arusha Gallery, curated by Rhiannon Salisbury, 2020
SELECTED PRESS
Evening Standard, Matrescence: Rhiannon Salisbury, 2023
Young Artists in Conversation (YAC), Interview, 2022
TEMPUS Magazine, Pictorum Gallery Feature, 2022
Made in Bed Magazine, Sotheby’s Institute London, Emerging Artist Feature, 2022
SPACE Podcast, Out of SPACE Episode 3, 2021
Artsy, “5 Artists On Our Radar”, 2021
Artlyst, Ancient Deities Review, 2020
This Is Tomorrow, Exhibition Review, 2020
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