Artist Profile

Milly Purcell is a BA Fine Art student at Arts University Bournemouth, graduating in 2026. Her practice explores the complex relationships between self and family, examining the lasting impact of mental illness, trauma, and emotional inheritance. Working through figurative imagery interwoven with recurring animalistic motifs, she investigates the tensions between intimacy and conflict, vulnerability and resilience. Her paintings seek to give form to difficult and often unspoken emotions, exploring the contradictions of love, anger, and care, and the ways in which human relationships can simultaneously wound and sustain us.