ABOUT
About and Statement
Cecilia Reeve (b.1996) is a London-based Artist exploring the intersection between Painting and Animation. She completed her MA in Animation at the Royal College of Art (2023).
Cecilia has sold work to private collectors and institutions such as Soho House and has exhibited her paintings with galleries including the Delphian Gallery in London. Since 2020 Cecilia has made several collections for Partnership Editions. Her work has been featured in ‘Its Nice That’; Harper’s Bazaar; Elephant; Die Zeit; and The Financial Times. In 2025 she held her first solo exhibition of paintings and animations ‘What the Water Gave Them’ at Twilight Contemporary in London and later presented a large-scale animation installation exhbition at Soho Revue in October.
Her animations have been shown globally at a variety of film festivals such as Sundance Film Festival 2022, London International Animation Festival and BitBang. She has also been included in screenings in institutions including the ICA(London) and the Tate Modern. In 2023 she won the ArtsThread Global Graduate Prize for her RCA graduate film 'Porous', which was later awarded a Vimeo Staff Pick.
Cecilia is represented for commercial work in animation and illustration by SNYDER. Commercial clients include The New York Times, The Financial Times, Holland Park Royal Opera House, and Wandsworth Borough of London.
(photo left credit: Rachael Smith)
In her work Cecilia explores the ethereal worlds of emotion, longing, and dreaming , creating mysterious and at times unsettling atmospheres in her work. Her combined practice of painting and animation and explores the notion of ‘animated painting’, combining materials such as oil on glass, and digital and painted backgrounds to create immersive pieces. Using the boundless possibilities of animation as a tool to bring static pieces to life that are untethered from canvas or paper.
Cecilia is captivated by the literary genre ‘Magical Realism’ and drawn to the moments in between: where dreams and reality collide and the ephemeral shadows that we leave in places passed by. Immersion in water is a pathway into portraying the Unconscious mind; as suspended in water our bodies become fragmented and out of time with the physical world. In her work Cecilia considers the female gaze and in turn her own body, using it as a source of reference and movement, examining and claiming the ways in which the (her) body can be seen and unseen.
EDUCATION
Animation MA, Royal College of Art, 2023
Foundation Diploma, Falmouth University, 2014
Illustration (BA Hons), The University of Brighton, 2018
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2025, What the Water Gave Them, Twilight Contemporary, March 2025, London
2025, Sleepwalking, Soho Revue, October- December 2025, London
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2025 Chair I, Twilight Contemporary, December 2025, London
2025 Papier III, Delphian Gallery, December 2025, Online
2025 Dive in the Blues, Rich Art Gallery, September 2025, Taichung, Taiwan,
2024 Summer Print Show, Soho Revue, July 2024, London
2024 Animation as Art, Museum of Texas Tech University, Texas, March- Summer 2024
2024 End of Residency Exhibition, Studio Kura, March 2024, Fukuoka, Japan
2024 Stop and Smell the Roses, February 2024, London
2023 Revue Studios, Soho Revue, December, London
2023 Royal College of Art Degree show, The Trewman Brewery,July 2023, London
2023 The Drawing Stall, January 2023, New York
2021 In the Flesh, Partnership Editions, November/December 2021, London
2021 All about Eve, Delphian Gallery, September 2021, London
2021 Tiny Pleasures Part II, Allmouth gallery, September 2021, Online
2021 Ambrosia, Purslane Art, July 2021, Online
2021 Normality and Other Wonders, July 2021, London
2021 ORIGIN, Delphian Gallery, June 2021, London
2021 ‘Domesticity and the Feminine’, Josephine May Bailey, June 2021 (Online)
2021 Mneymosyne, Purslane Art, March 2021 (online)
2021 ‘The Birthday party’, The artists Contemporary, February 2021 (online)
2020 Works on paper II, Blue Shop Cottage, September 2020, (online)
2018 In Cahoots, July 2018, London
2018 University of Brighton Degree show, July 2018 Brighton
2018 The Bathers, The Borough Road Archive, November 2018 (online)
2015 Falmouth foundation degree show, JULY 2015, Falmouth
RESIDENCIES
2024 Studio Kura, Fukuoka, Japan
2023 Revue Studios, London
AWARDS
ArtsThread Global Graduation Prize in Collaboration with Gucci- 2023
Vimeo Staff Pick 2025