SARAHCROWN, the New York gallery and online platform, published an interview with Pippa El-Kadhi Brown in its conversation series on 10 August 2026, titled on the page Pippa El-Kadhi Brown, and Her Kaleidoscopic Portals into the Mind's Eye. Sarah Corona asks how the artist works, what her colours do and what she means when she calls her paintings an excavation.
El-Kadhi Brown explains that Acatenango (2024) was named after hiking the Acatenango volcano in Guatemala and watching Volcán de Fuego erupt nearby, and that around then her paintings took on a volcanic quality, billowing and erupting. She works on several canvases at once, so that colour moves between them, and is drawn to airy palettes of shimmering blues and pastels, with surfaces that feel worn, like faded bedsheets or a hazily remembered daydream. Excavation, she says, is "a process of uncovering, of slowly revealing traces," as forms are laid down and carved back out of the paint until a sense of place emerges.
Born in London in 1996, Pippa El-Kadhi Brown studied painting at the University of Brighton and took an MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art in 2022. The interview lists her Freelands Foundation Fellowship, recent group shows including The Hug at SARAHCROWN New York and Ways of Seeing at the Rothko Museum in Daugavpils, and earlier solo exhibitions in London. She took part in Tabari's La Serena Residency in Tuscany in 2025, and is represented by Tabari.
