Artist France-Lise McGurn on Making Painting Less Precious

”How can you get under the covers with me, but with painting?”

We visited Scottish painter France-Lise McGurn in her London studio and were blown away by her energy, generosity, and casual look on life and the art world.

“I think my work is deeply personal. But I don’t like the idea of having a very strict personal narrative. My physical body’s in the paintings because it’s what I have at hand. Everything in my work is like an amalgamation of all the stuff that I’m interested in.”

“You see lots of naked women in my paintings, and you also see lots of naked women in the streets – in the billboards, in the magazines that we look at. If the world were filled with half-naked men, there’d be a lot more men in my paintings.”

“Maybe one of my main pursuits is to try to make painting less precious or less distant or more connected to people. I’m not hiding behind anything. I’m not going to finesse this for you. It’s like wit. Something happening quickly, and being direct and having something that the viewer wants to relate to. And that’s totally the most interesting thing to me. It’s like being in the now.”

France-Lise McGurn was born in Glasgow in 1983. She studied her BA at Duncan of Jordanstone, Dundee, in 2005, her MA at the Royal College of Art, London, and her MA painting Exchange at Hunter College of Art, New York, in 2012. Currently, she divides her time between London and Glasgow.

McGurn predominantly works with painting to create layered installations that incorporate the gallery walls, floors, and ceilings. Her calligraphic brushstrokes are made intuitively and swiftly, prioritising rhythm and movement, which convey a relationship to themes of intimacy, ecstasy, and memory. She works indirectly from a collected archive of imagery, which forms the shapes, lines, and shorthand that spill across canvases and surfaces. These collected materials form the body of her own research and include celebrity autographs, classical sculpture, photography, women’s magazines, 70s film, advertisements, flyers, figurines, found objects, and furniture.

Selected solo exhibitions include: Bad TV, MASSIMODECARLO, Hong Kong (2025); Strawberry, MASSIMODECARLO, London (2024); What Everyone Wants, The Modern Institute, Glasgow (2024); House Of Voltaire Presents France-Lise McGurn, Studio Voltaire, London (2023); Aloud, commission for Glasgow International, Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museums, Glasgow (2022); In Emotia, Tramway, Glasgow (2020); Bodytronic, Kunsthaus Pasquart, Biel, Switzerland (2020) and Art Now: France-Lise McGurn, Sleepless, Tate Britain, London (2019).

Selected group exhibitions include: Hysteric Grammar, an installation for Winter Lights, Southbank Centre, London (2025); The lnfinite Woman, Fondation Carmignac, Hyères (2024); Matching Mother Daughter Tattoos, Margot Samel, New York (2023); New Arrivals: From Salvador Dali to Jenny Saville, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, UK (2021); Mark Making: Perspectives on Drawing, Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow, UK (2019); and Virginia Woolf: An Exhibition Inspired By Her Writings, Tate St. Ives, St. Ives, UK (2018, this exhibition travelled to Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, UK and The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK).
McGurn has forthcoming solo exhibitions at MASSIMODECARLO, Domus Haus, Basel (Opening 15 June 2026); DCA – Dundee Contemporary Arts, Scotland, UK (Opening 21 August 2026 through 15 November 2026), and a two-year commission at The Rodin Museum, Philadelphia, US (Opening February 2027). She will also launch a collaborative exhibition programme at Bonnie doesn’t live at home, Glasgow, Scotland, in June 2026 to coincide with Glasgow International.

Her work is held in museum collections such as K11 Art Foundation, Hong Kong; Stiftung Kunsthaus-Sammlung Pasquart, Biel; David Roberts Collection, London; New Hall Art Collection, Murray Edwards College, Cambridge; TATE, London; Dallas Museum of Art, Texas, and Hill Art Foundation, New York.

France-Lise McGurn was interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner in her London studio in February 2026.

Camera: Simon Weyhe
Edit: Jarl Therkelsen Kaldan
Produced by: Marc-Christoph Wagner
Copyright: Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2026

Music via Upright:
Acrylic (D) by William August Saval Hunt
Fancy Free by Kenny Salmon
Dreamers by Michael Hoe Seong Tan
Dreamers (Underscore version) by Michael Hoe Seong Tan
Dust Motes by Timothy Cole

Louisiana Channel is supported by Den A.P. Møllerske Støttefond.

Subscribe to our channel for more videos on art: https://www.youtube.com/thelouisianachannel

FOLLOW US HERE:
Website: http://channel.louisiana.dk
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/louisianachannel
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LouisianaChannel

Video Source