Joanna Whittle (b. 1974, Lusaka, Zambia) creates small scale and miniature paintings which depict transient and fragile structures in unpeopled landscapes, constructed with many layers of paint and minute brush marks. Seemingly real, these landscapes soon unravel into dreamlike spaces. They are assembled from many sources; from places experienced or remembered, or parts of paintings, or entirely imagined elements, pulled together in meticulous detail which makes these impossible worlds seem almost real.
Her work speaks to our ‘being in the world’ and the fragility of the structures she depicts also reflects our lightness on the earth as individuals, our brief moments of being in time, but also the intensity of those moments, represented in her application of paint. The landscapes in which her structures sit are unstable too, with flooded or muddy ground which seems not to rest, or to provide any stability of ground. Yet these structures pause for long enough to become overgrown with weeds, derelict and yet illuminated in an already shifting moment, where past, present and our futures combine. Her ‘Forest Shrine’ paintings depict makeshift constructions in dark pine forests, assembled from the forest floor, adorned and illuminated by unseen hands. They speak of concealed rituals of memorial and loss in the landscape and our hidden place within them.
Light features strongly in her work and using traditional and miniature painting techniques she creates a luminosity where the structures and the paintings themselves appear to be illuminated from within. She often paints on copper which itself becomes a source of light, also giving the paintings the appearance of icons or precious objects.
These small scale paintings occupy vast space; that of the imagination where time and space unravels through the viewer’s engagement with an infinite world into which they peer. But they also speak of wider and contemporary themes expressed through a romantic and picturesque language, challenging the truth of this language whilst speaking of our fragile and injured landscape and environment and our equally precarious place in it. But yet they also speak of love, of light and how we look for both, and their shelter in the face of, and in spite of darkness.
Whittle's work has been the subject of solo exhibitions including Lost Territories at Gramercy Park Studios, London (2024) and On Shifting Ground at Whitaker Museum, Lancashire (2023). She has also exhibited in group exhibitions including Don’t Let’s Ask for the Moon at Leeds Art Gallery, Leeds (2025), Arcadia for All? at Attenborough Arts Centre, Leicester (2023), VOLTA Basel at Messe Basel, Basel (2023), Reclaiming the Landscape, Saatchi Gallery (2023) and New Light Exhibition at Tullie House Museum, Carlisle (2021), among others.
Her work is held in public collections including Contemporary British Painting, the Drogheda Public Collection, Ireland, and the National Fairground and Circus Archive, as well as in notable private collections. Whittle was awarded the New Light Prize, Valeria Sykes Award (2020) and the Contemporary British Painting Prize (2019). She has been shortlisted for the John Moores Painting Prize (2025, 2023, 2018) and was a recipient of the Freelands Artist Programme residency at Site Gallery, Sheffield and London (2019–2022). She has recently curated the exhibition Unquiet Landscapes, a collaboration between Contemporary British Painting and Yorkshire Artspace (2025).
Whittle is a part of Heavy Water Collective, a curatorial project co-founded by Whittle, Maud Haya-Baviera and Victoria Lucas. The Collective has participated in research residencies at Heritage Quay Archives & Huddersfield Archives (2025), University of Central Lancashire Archives & Lancashire Archives (2025), University of Sheffield and Humraz Women's Group (2024), Sedgwick Museum Archives, University of Cambridge (2024) and curated the exhibition Gathering Landscapes, Weston Park Museum, Sheffield (2025).