Abigail Boisot

I was born in London, educated in France, England and the US. I graduated with a BFA in Painting from Massachusetts College of Art in 1996, and spent a term at Barcelona’s Escuela de Bellas Artes. After graduating from college, I moved to Barcelona, where I lived for nine years, working in publishing and design. In 2005 I returned to the UK and studied at Heatherley’s School of Art in Chelsea for their two-year diploma in portraiture. My earlier work was mainly focused on the human figure but after completing my diploma, I started to become interested in painting animals, especially horses and dogs. 

In my equine paintings, I use a combination of photographs and sketches of polo, racing and more recently dressage, to produce paintings dominated by movement and colour. I use abstract shapes, gesture painting and a bold application of brush strokes to capture the passion and energy of the sport.

After moving to Oxfordshire in 2011, my work suddenly changed. My father became very ill and subsequently died after a short but intense battle with lymphoma. Whilst walking my dogs around the local landscape, I felt a need to express my grief and started to develop a language through painting and printmaking, the results of which can be seen in my Eyecatcher artworks and landscapes.

My work has been influenced by Lucien Freud, Georg Baselitz, Keith Vaughn, and David Bomberg among others, and most recently by Graham Sutherland.

I am now working on new body of work, which I will be posting from time to time on Instagram.