Daisy McMullan is an artist who creates richly layered paintings that document the natural world. Her works reimagine nature as an emotional mirror, transforming seemingly insignificant verges, paths, and wild edges into luminous, otherworldly places. Drawing on folk art, magical realism, deep ecology, and sacred geometries, Daisy blends expressive colour and gestural mark‑making in complex layers to create shifting depths and narratives within these part-real, part-imagined spaces. Her paintings use bold colour, underpainting, and glazing to build movement and light, revealing the glimmers of hope and joy found in nature for those willing to look closely.

Daisy’s paintings frequently feature the verges, lines, and paths that map out ways of navigating the world both physically and emotionally. These are places she walks regularly; overlooked, common spaces that belong to everyone and no one. They are small wildernesses, uncultivated and irregular, which she transforms into imaginative compositions. Multiple layers of colour and glazes create a sense of layered stories and narratives within these marginal spaces, where emotional resonance and ecological observation intertwine.

Her compositions play with the sacred geometries of nature (spirals, circles, webs), drawing inspiration from the research of artist and permaculture expert Liz Postlethwaite, and the writings on deep ecology and systems thinking by scholar Joanna Macy. Many of the paintings are marked by contrasting flatness and depth, manipulating traditional methods of conjuring perspective on the painted surface. Each work becomes a meditation on an interaction with the natural world: a rewilding of the mind, self, and soul. Romantic ideals of returning to nature, individual spirituality, and treading ancient paths to commune with the metaphysical deeply influence her creative process.

Daisy’s work also references Dutch Golden Age still life and forest floor paintings, where life, death, and spirit are carefully balanced in heightened tones. Daisy’s works serve as records of nature, preserving seemingly unimportant details for a future time, while also engaging deeply with the technology and technicalities of painting. Daisy continually experiments with colour, opacity, viscosity, and temperature, selecting her palette to impart feeling, texture, and movement to plant life.

Natural forms in her paintings are built using a combination of free, expressive strokes, textural stippling, and folk art‑inspired lines that shape leaves and petals. Tonal layers, akin to the construction of a screen print, are used to build movement and tension between translucent and opaque forms. Underpainting, inspired by the Old Masters, adds luminous depth. These ideas and techniques are gradually layered, with colour and light added incrementally until a beautiful image emerges from the dark.

Daisy trained as a fine artist at Wimbledon School of Art and Camberwell College of Arts, earning a BA (Hons) in Painting in 2007. She later pursued a Master’s in Curating at Chelsea College of Art and Design and was awarded a two-year Research Fellowship in 2012 at Chelsea Space, a public gallery at the College. Daisy currently works as an artist, educator, and curator.

Notable solo exhibitions by Daisy include 'Observed Imagined Remembered' at Cass Art Kingston (2022) and 'Rewildings' at Dorking Museum (2022). She has also participated in group shows including: ‘For the Love of Art History’, Young Masters Art Prize at the Exhibitionist Hotel, London (2025), ‘Pearlescent’ at ASC Gallery, The Handbag Factory (2025), ‘Milestone: 20 Years in Art’ and 'Summer Exhibition 2024' at Cynthia Corbett Gallery (2024), 'HERO' at Great West Gallery (2024), ‘People and Landscapes’, 'Mirror of Life' and 'Abstract Worlds' at Croydon Art Space (2025, 2024 and 2023 respectively), 'Winter Group Show' at Folkestone Art Gallery (2023), and the 'Young Masters' Invitational Exhibition at The Exhibitionist Hotel (2023-24). Daisy has exhibited with Cynthia Corbett Gallery at the British Art Fair, hosted by the Saatchi Gallery in 2023, 2024 and 2025. She was also selected for the Women in Art Fair Artist' Spotlight section in 2024, and was shortlisted for the SAA Artist of the Year People’s Choice Award in 2022.

Daisy works from her studio in Kingston, South London, creating paintings and exhibitions that reflect on nature and place. These works become emotional documents, depicting unseen feelings as much as they record the visible world.