Oriele Steiner (b. 1993, London, England) gained a BA Honours in Fine Art: Painting at Brighton University (2015). The painter was selected for Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2016 and the went on to receiving a bursary by New Contemporaries with Liverpool based Artist led Studio’s The Royal Standard. (2017) More recently had a solo show in Brighton.

Oriele’s work explores a wide array of painting techniques and processes, using colour and light as the dominant means of experimentation. She is interested in a palette’s ability to evoke emotion, whether through its direct, singular use or via juxtaposition and dissonance. Her paintings are deliberately layered with conflicting emotions - she wishes to place whimsical moments on stage for the world to see, like single frames taken from a comic strip; whilst her compositions imply they exist as part of a larger story, the task us with considering a particular moment. The compositions are derived from Steiner’s very ‘British’ sense of humour - simultaneously comical and dark; surreal yet totally, relatedly human. Fears and taboos leap out of the work, imagery and motifs from personal moments transform themselves in the viewer’s mind. Oriele is asking us to judge whether the privacy of these moments is intimate or gross - perhaps a more traditional British comedian would quip “what’s the difference?”.

Photograph taken by Brynley Odu Davies.