In my practice I engage with the ‘vital materiality’ of the inanimate world, and the porous intersection between living and non-living. In doing so I ask: “how do you find meaning in precariousness, dissolution and decay?” or, put another way, “how do you live and make work in the midst of catastrophe – bodies beset by illness and dysfunction, a world in environmental and social crisis – that is both deeply personal and terrifyingly universal?” 

I hope to make pictorial spaces that are convincing and complex, luminous, mysterious and tactile.  My process is based in observation from life and photographic references, but also involves building fictitious spaces from subconscious impulse, and fragments of memory and dream. Throughout, I am aware of how my materials – paint, canvas, ground and solvent – exert a will of their own during the painting process.


Miranda Elliott is a painter based in Toronto, Canada, with an interdisciplinary background in genetics and epidemiology. Recurring themes in her work include: embodiment and deep time, the power and presence of inanimate matter, and the fertile border between the living and non-living.