grace mcnerney

Grace’s paintings are a pursuit through the liminal and the mundane in search of the sex, religion, and death that underpin popular culture. Grace’s oil paintings are often inspired by charity shop discoveries - vinyl covers, old magazines, recipe books - that speak to the fashions and fads of earlier generations. She prefers her paintings saturated and soft, achieved through a buildup of thin layers of paint blended to evoke the slightly out-of-focus images of her subjects. 

Her degree show presentation at Chelsea College of Arts (2023) was a meditation on regional open-plan office culture and a commentary on the peripheral microcultures generated by the service economy. More recently, Grace’s focus has been on the transience of pop culture phenomena: how people are collectively enthralled by an  event or place or person for a period of time, before collectively moving on to the next big thing, almost simultaneously. 

A new body of work - titled With You Always - will be shown at Grace’s salon show in October 2025. The series is a reflection on the feminine ideal and its role as a keystone of post-war culture, telling a story of contradiction through female desires, pressures and realities; Seven Brides for Seven Brothers meets Diana, Princess of Wales. 

Grace graduated from the BA Fine Art programme at Chelsea College of Arts in 2023. She joined Crème Fraîche in its inaugural year, and after a short hiatus now returns for the second year. Her work has been shown across London (Crème Fraîche at the ICA, Bomb Factory, Seventeen Gallery, Millbank Tower), and in Salisbury (Vanner Gallery), and she has recently been shortlisted for the Hari Art Prize, which will announce its winner in November 2025.