Gretel Warner lives and works in Essex, exploring the emotional complexity of human experience through painting. Working primarily with oil paint, charcoal, and pastel, she embraces the fluid, malleable nature of these materials, layering and reworking surfaces as a reflection of shifting internal states. Her process is intuitive and physical, guided by feeling rather than the pursuit of perfection.

Her practice is rooted in lived experience and informed by feminist thought, examining what it means to navigate emotional life as a woman today. Writing plays a central role in her visual practice; diary entries, fragments of poetry, and fleeting internal monologues often form the starting point for her paintings. Words evolve into images, becoming visual metaphors for emotions that resist direct articulation.

Recent work centres on the cyclical nature of feeling, understanding emotion as rhythmic rather than linear. Through curled, recoiled and foetal-leaning figures, she explores protection, vulnerability, and renewal - reframing rest and retreat as generative phases. Her work invites viewers to recognise resilience and agency within every emotional state, whether expansive or still.