Marilyn Hallam (b. 1947, Yorkshire) studied Fine Art at the University of Reading, completing her BA in 1969 and MA in 1972. She has lived and worked in southeast London and St Leonards-on-Sea for many years, maintaining a long-term studio at APT Studios in Deptford. Her career has unfolded steadily, marked by an unwavering commitment to a painting practice that balances close observation with a highly considered approach to pictorial structure.
Hallam's work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, most recently the Pauls Smith Space, 2024 and Bobinska Brownlee in 2022, which brought together a body of work exploring the compositional and emotional possibilities of interior space. Earlier solo shows include Other Things at Constantine Gallery, Teesside University (2014), as well as presentations at SEl Gallery (2009), Smith Jariwala Gallery (1990-93), Towner Gallery (1987), Vortex Gallery (1984), Bakehouse Gallery (1982), and University Art Gallery Reading (1980). She has also exhibited widely in group contexts, from early appearances at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in Rooms (1985) and MoMA Oxford's Platform '72 to more recent participations in Linden Hall Studio Summer Show (2022), APT Open Studios, and multiple Royal Academy Summer Exhibitions.
Her work has gained renewed attention in recent years through inclusion in group shows with Blackbird Rook, who represent her, and through a major presentation at the Paul Smith Space that introduced her paintings to a wider audience. In these exhibitions, Hallam's subjects have remained deceptively simple - windows opening onto gardens or streets, tables set with objects, figures glimpsed through doorways - but the treatment is meticulous and far from commonplace.
As painter Mali Morris RA has noted, Hallam builds her works through a long process of drawing, tracing, photocopying, collaging and reconstruction before paint touches canvas. The resulting paintings are airy and luminous, yet underpinned by a complex structure that rewards sustained looking. Cuillin Bantock has described her art as consciously avoiding naturalism in favour of a language in which every element is shaped by scale, surface, edge and design. Colour is high-key yet controlled, with pinks, reds, ochres and violets integrated through a cool, exact touch.
Hallam's paintings occupy a space between the domestic and the contemplative. They are rooted in the everyday yet animated by a searching intelligence that treats painting itself as an act of inquiry. In their clarity, restraint and quiet luminosity, they invite the viewer not only to look, but to keep looking.