In autumn 2025, we welcomed Daisy Parris to the Roberts Institute of Art Residency in Scotland.
Daisy Parris
September–October 2025
Daisy Parris is a UK-based painter whose work explores psychological space through a raw and expressive visual language. Combining direct text-based elements with abstract mark-making, Parris creates paintings that reflect the depths and peaks of human experience, relationships, and personal struggles.
Daisy offers unflinching narratives alongside moments of quiet reflection and tenderness, acting as intimate self-portraits. Parris’ paintings capture personal battles and triumphs with honesty and intensity that are, at times, silent and contemplative, at others bold and unrestrained.
Daisy had intended to work with large text and poetry on canvas, but soon realised the residency was an ideal opportunity to play and experiment, including by working on smaller canvases, testing how incorporating text at a reduced scale could still feel substantial.
The surrounding Scottish landscape left a strong impression in Daisy’s work, particularly the unusual pink-red undertone of the River South Esk, which runs through the residency grounds.
Initially painting with translucent red-brown washes, Daisy’s process involved letting go of first impressions and instead continuing to build layers of brighter colours. The paintings Daisy made in the residency studio developed into lighter tones, giving more sense of space on the canvas.
I'm excited to take back with me this lightness, space, distance and all the information I've received from the landscape that has been so generous. Colour is going to be one of the big things that I'm going to circle back to now, so I'm eager to start painting even bigger with this light colour I've discovered.
— Daisy Parris
Writing runs alongside and within Daisy’s painting practice. During a visit to Edinburgh, they met poet and artist Alec Finlay to discuss how writing could be approached in the same way as Daisy approaches their painting process: accumulating, scraping back and cutting until only what needs to remain survives.
Daisy also made a long-anticipated visit to Scotland’s only analogue photo booth at Stills in Edinburgh. There they photographed larger versions of their painted poetry. Miniaturising the text by transforming them into small photostrips created immediate, intimate ‘portraits’ of their poems.
Writing, then painting, then photographing the words are a way to drill them into me, and try to get to the core of them.
— Daisy Parris