Phoebe Leech

Phoebe Leech (b. 1999, Yorkshire) is a British figurative painter based between Oxford and London. A graduate of City & Guilds of London Art School (First Class Honours, 2025), her practice examines the human condition through vulnerable subjects, expressive gestures, and an unflinching attention to the body. Leech's gestural mark-making involves intertwining identity, psychological tension and emotional intensity, captivating viewers. In her final year at City & Guilds of London Art School, she developed her work in dialogue with artists such as Justin Mortimer and Jonathan Williams.

Her solo exhibition Hidden Boys, Open Blue, opening at JD Malat Gallery London November 12 expands on themes within her Male Domesticity series and reflects the creative evolution of an exciting voice in contemporary figuration. Leech's painterly exploration of masculinity, innocence, and emotional visibility examines how identity is formed, concealed, and remembered, using the body as both subject and metaphor. Her monumental canvases form a layered meditation on transitional states of male growth and human experience, moments of play and recollection suspended between presence and loss.

Working primarily in oil, she layers paint with instinctive mark-making that evokes both intimacy and distance. Figures emerge and dissolve within layered blues, skies and seas merging with skin, while surface abrasions, gestural scratches, and veils of pigment recall the residue of experience. The result is an emotional topography of paint: charged, tender, and humane. 

Her work has been shown in group exhibitions including Summer Group Show at JD Malat Gallery (2025) and From the Studio at City & Guilds of London Art School (2023).