“Each mark feels like it was left by something that once breathed.”

The space between memory and material

Billy Bagilhole is a Welsh painter and filmmaker based in the United Kingdom. His practice moves between painting and film, tracing how empathy turns into matter.

His dense, salt-heavy canvases carry a haunted kind of abstraction that has drawn growing attention. 

Painting by Billy Bagilhole showing a figure carrying a child through a red landscape with black mountains, white trees, and a distant burning house beneath a pale sky.
Billy Bagilhole: Look Through the Pine Barrens, acrylic on canvas. Image courtesy the artist.

Billy Bagilhole: On the left: Ashes on the Path Home, acrylic on canvas. On the right: Friday Night at the Ritzy, acrylic on canvas. Images courtesy the artist.

He has exhibited widely, with solo shows at Rhodes Contemporary  and Blue Shop Gallery in London, Gallery at Home in Wales, and a two man exhibition with American artist Mark Sengbusch at K & L Museum in Seoul. 

Bagilhole has also exhibited with Delphian Gallery, including being one of the winners of their 2019 Open Call and participating in group exhibitions such as Post/Future at the Saatchi Gallery, London.

His paintings are part of collections such as Soho House and the National Eisteddfod of Wales.

Gallery installation view showing several colourful paintings by Billy Bagilhole on white walls at K & L Museum in South Korea.
Billy Bagilhole: Installation view, K & L Museum, South Korea. Image courtesy the artist.
Exhibition view showing four large colourful abstract paintings by Billy Bagilhole from the series Under the Tree Trunk, displayed on white walls at K & L Museum in South Korea.
Billy Bagilhole: Installation view of Under the Tree Trunk at K & L Museum, South Korea. Image courtesy the artist.

Inheritance as atmosphere

The story begins in his father’s studio, a room once filled with paintings of Native Americans, animals, and saints.

When his father died in 2001, those pictures stayed behind, holding the kind of silence that doesn’t fade.

You can feel that echo inside his work. He paints not about loss but through it. Every line holds a trace of that first lesson: that colour can mourn, and salt can preserve memory better than words ever could.

Painting by Billy Bagilhole depicting two seated figures embracing beside two white dogs, with abstract shapes, a green background, and a grey wolf head above.
Billy Bagilhole: Stray Dogs, acrylic on canvas. Image courtesy the artist.

Characters that keep watch

Bagilhole’s small cast of symbols, fish bones, a figure named “Edwin,” the bull, moves through his paintings like familiar ghosts. They appear, disappear, come back wearing new skins.

Painting by Billy Bagilhole showing a pale figure with a bleeding chest beside a bull’s head and large knife, set against vivid orange and black shapes.
Billy Bagilhole: Bull Trophies & Stinging Nettles, acrylic on canvas. Image courtesy the artist.
Painting by Billy Bagilhole showing a large black bull against a bright yellow background, with red outlines of a reclining human figure drawn inside the animal’s body.
Billy Bagilhole: Splintered Rock, acrylic and oil on canvas. Image courtesy the artist.

These shapes link one canvas to the next, tying humour to grief and instinct to ritual.

In Rain Dogs or Bull Trophies & Stinging Nettles, the animals carry the same pulse as the human hand that painted them. They witness, they stay.

Painting by Billy Bagilhole featuring a white dog lying on a dark blue ground, surrounded by vivid yellow lines and abstract circular forms suggesting light and rain.
Billy Bagilhole: Rain Dogs, acrylic on canvas. Image courtesy the artist.

The beauty of bewilderment

He once described painting as a way to create the unknown. That sentence lingers. His work doesn’t aim for clarity, it toys with it, lets it slip away.

Billy Bagilhole: On the left: Cash Heavy, acrylic on canvas. On the right: Little Bastad, acrylic on canvas. Images courtesy the artist.

Artist Billy Bagilhole in his studio, holding a canvas among paint jars and brushes, with several of his works, including Cash Heavy, visible on the wall.
Billy Bagilhole: in his studio, surrounded by paints and works in progress, including Cash Heavy on the wall behind him. Image courtesy the artist.

Colours mix like feelings you can’t quite name, moss green, iron red, bone white, each with its own weather.
The surface thickens, breathes, settles. Looking becomes its own slow ritual.

Billy Bagilhole: In his studio. Image courtesy the artist.

Between film and flesh

Bagilhole moves like a filmmaker when he paints. Cuts, sequences, half-frames. Layers overlap as if time itself were cross-fading.

You can almost hear the reel turning when you look long enough. The images hesitate, then sharpen, then dissolve.

The rhythm feels human, almost bodily, like editing a memory by touch.

Billy Bagilhole: Installation views from Felt Collections. Images courtesy the artist.

Studio view showing artist Billy Bagilhole standing beside several paintings on the wall, including Cash Heavy, surrounded by paint jars, brushes, and unfinished canvases.
Billy Bagilhole: studio view with works in progress, including Cash Heavy and other recent paintings. Image courtesy the artist.

Follow Billy Bagilhole on Instagram and visit Billy's website. Share this with someone who still believes painting can think.

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