There’s No Place Like Home
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Michelle Maddox is a British artist based in Switzerland. She has an MA in Fine Art (Distinction) from UCA, England, a BA in History of Art from Birkbeck, University of London, and completed the postgraduate Drawing Development Year at the Royal Drawing School, London. She also has a Certificate of Advanced Studies in Artistic Development from the University of the Arts Zurich (ZHdK).
Michelle’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, New English Art Club, Royal Institute of Oil Painters, Royal Society of British Artists, Helmhaus Zurich, Kunsthaus Zofingen, Galerie Mercier, Paris and is now a gallery artist with Tregony Contemporary, Cornwall. Recent highlights include selection for the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris by Visarte Zurich (2025), a Royal Drawing School residency at Dumfries House (2024), and participation in a programme with JSS Studio School and New York Studio School in Civita Castellana, Italy (2021).
Michelle was awarded the Green & Stone Award in 2025, resulting in a solo exhibition in London in 2026. Her work is held in private collections internationally and in the Royal Collection at Dumfries House.
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Michelle is a painter who uses observation as the starting point for her work, allowing meaning to emerge through the process of painting. Her recent practice explores ideas of home and belonging, shaped by her mixed cultural heritage and lifelong search for a sense of place. While everyday objects, interior spaces, and landscapes remain important subjects, she has come to recognise that her strongest sense of home is found in the act of creating itself.
Through carefully arranged still lifes and familiar objects, Michelle explores memory, comfort, and identity. Particular objects and colours evoke a sense of familiarity, while fragments and impressions invite the viewer to experience the feeling of remembering rather than a fixed narrative.
Michelle's painting process uses oil paint and a simple visual language in which colour plays a central role in creating warmth and intimacy. Rather than describing objects precisely, she allows forms to soften and dissolve, leaving space for atmosphere and emotion to emerge. While her work begins with observation, she is not interested in reproducing reality. Instead, she uses painting to explore mood, memory, and the quiet resonance of ordinary things.
The exhibition There’s No Place Like Home brings together recent paintings that reflect on these ideas. The works suggest moments, objects, and spaces that evoke belonging, asking how colour, memory, and familiarity shape our sense of home.