About

Style, Pressure & Beauty That Bites - Why I Paint

I paint a curated world, one shaped by influencers, online press, tabloid drama, fashion, and travel. It’s a surface we’re constantly sold. My work is colourful, composed, and contemporary. But beneath that polish, there’s a quiet acerbity.

I’m drawn to what we polish, filter, present, and to what’s vanishing: character, individuality, quality. We live in an age of polyester, plastic, imported sameness, and Amazon everything. Handmade is niche. Natural fabrics are rare. Retail is vanishing. Conformity is pitched as virtue.

I grew up with the legacy of Northern manufacturing. Wool, worsted, cotton, sharp dressing, polished shoes, and substance. Now it’s all recycled sheen, quick fixes, and moral performance. I paint to hold onto something: character, freedom, and the pleasure of beauty that doesn’t apologise.

My work moves between glamour and grit, fashion and the everyday. There are women who flaunt, not apologise, because style, self-display, and sensuality shouldn’t be under suspicion. There are interiors, still lifes, and surreal intrusions that reflect a world under pressure: from puritanism, from performance, from control.

I’m interested in the space between modesty and exposure, conformity and flair. I paint the present moment through objects, bodies, and clothes. A personal archive of what’s being lost, and what still fights to be seen.

I came back to painting because I didn’t want to live the same year on repeat. It’s how I push myself, stay awake, and test what I’m capable of. The work keeps me learning. And when it’s working, it brings joy.

About the Artist

Sally Driver is a London-based painter whose work explores glamour, control, and the pressure to perform. Her paintings draw on fashion, interiors, and still life, capturing what’s curated, what’s collapsing, and what refuses to disappear.

With a background in textile design, she brings a sharp eye for surface, pattern, and style. Her work often plays with contradiction: modesty and display, polish and protest, nostalgia and edge.

Sally’s paintings are held in private collections across the UK.

Selected Exhibitions & Education

Exhibitions
2025 – New Light Summer Exhibition, Sunny Bank Mills, Yorkshire
2022 – Was There Ever a Bud So Fair? (Solo), Weavers Factory, Greater Manchester
2021 – Art in the Time of Covid (Curator), cARTon, Catford

Education
BA Hons, Textile Design – Nottingham Trent University
Foundation Diploma in Art & Design – Bradford College of Art