Onya McCausland

McCausland’s paintings explore ideas of landscape using materials which are sourced from and evoke specific locations. Her new paintings in After Nature are made using ochre and copper sulphate, materials that are by-products of iron and copper mining, sourced from decommissioned mines.McCausland’s practice develops an environmentalism that addresses the materials and materiality of how painting and paint relates to the Earth (as being made from chemical elements and processes) and human cultures, as well as traditions of art that relate to specific sites and places.

McCausland studied painting at Falmouth School of Art, and the Slade School of Fine Art, where

she returned to complete a PhD between 2014-17. In 1995 she was an external recipient of the

Slade's Boise Travel Scholarship. In 2018 she was awarded a three year Post Doctoral Early Career Fellowship from the Leverhulme Foundation. During this time established Turning Landscape CIC, a community interest company making paint from waste iron residues forming from polluting mine waters in the South Wales village of Six Bells. In 2022 the company received funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund Wales to establish an arts and educational programme alongside paint making. In 2020 she established a research and reading group called Environment, Ecology, Sustainability, and was appointed Head of Undergraduate Painting in at the Slade School of Fine Art in 2022. 

Recent exhibitions include Middlesborough Institute of Modern Art, Norrtälje Konsthall, Sweden, Akureyri Museum, Iceland and Karsten Schubert Gallery, London.