MIA ELISABETH

Mia Elisabeth is a painter and musician working predominantly from life. Her paintings move between traditional and contemporary painting, bringing carefully observed figures into dialogue with abstracted, dreamlike worlds.

Mia trained at Charles H. Cecil Studios in Florence, where she spent three years studying drawing and painting in the sight-size tradition. She went on to study Pittura, Storia dell’Arte e Scultura at the Rome University of Fine Arts, before completing a degree in History of Art at University College London.

Her work has since been recognised with the Sacha and Susannah Steven Award for portraiture, and she has returned to Charles H. Cecil Studios to teach on its summer programme in Florence. Based in London, Mia works from her studio on private commissions and her wider painting practice.

Music is inseparable from her work. Alongside painting, Mia is a touring musician, performing her original music across Europe. Records fill the studio and shape the atmosphere of her portrait sittings, while her live paintings capture musicians in the immediacy of performance, painted at concerts, on stage and in the studio.

At the heart of Mia’s practice is the time shared between artist and subject. Working from life allows a portrait to become an accumulation of moments: looking, conversation, music, silence and the gradual understanding of another person. Rather than pursuing likeness alone, Mia paints in search of something less tangible: the presence, energy and spirit of a person experienced first-hand.