Darcy Whent

Darcy Whent (b. 2002, Wales) is a painter based in Bristol whose work delves into the fragile borderlands between memory and imagination. Rooted in figurative and narrative painting, Whent’s practice examines themes of motherhood, identity, and the slippage between personal and collective experience. Through a language of recurring motifs — domestic interiors, animals, and the mutable female form — she constructs intimate worlds that oscillate between childhood and adulthood, truth and invention.

Working in a mode of “autofiction,” Whent reinterprets her own memories and inherited narratives, transforming them into scenes that feel at once familiar and uncanny. Her layered compositions often carry a dreamlike charge, suggesting that memory itself is an act of storytelling — mutable, tender, and unreliable.

A graduate of the Bath School of Art, Whent is currently based at Pennywell Studios, Bristol. Her recent exhibitions include The House We Built at The Mount Without, Bristol, and On All Fours, a solo exhibition in London (2024). She was longlisted for the Freelands Painting Prize (2023) and has received widespread recognition, including the Delphian Gallery Open Call (2025), shortlistings for the Homiens Prize (Winter 2025) and the ACS Studio Prize (2025), and selection as a finalist for the Ingram Prize (2025).