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.