Senior Lecturer Painting

  • Academic
  • Research
Dr Moyra Derby

Dr Moyra Derby is an artist working with painting and pictorial conventions, and is currently Senior Lecturer in Painting on the BA Fine Art course at UCA Canterbury.

Dr Moyra Derby

Bio

Moyra Derby studied at University of Ulster at Belfast and Cheltenham School of Art before receiving an MA Painting from the Royal College of Art in 1996, where she received the Basil H Alkazzi Travel Scholarship to New York, La Cité Internationale des Arts Paris Studio Award and The British Institution Fund Painting Award. Moyra is currently undertaking a practice-based PhD at the University of Kent on the cognitive conditions of pictorial attention.

Research statement

Moyra's research interests are painting based, reflecting a studio practice making paintings, drawings, direct wall working and pictorial constructions. Research output is through exhibitions, curatorial projects and writing.

Painting as a holding structure for contradictory expectations and oppositional positions has informed recent research, most recently considerations of depth and breadth, illusion and materiality, abstraction and depiction.  The 'made to be looked at' status of painting and its limits and restrictions inform an interest in theories of perception and the interchange between viewer and viewed.

Professional Membership, Affiliation and Consultancy

  • Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
  • Founding Trustee of Crate Studio & Project Space in Margate, supporting Crate's Curatorial Bursary (2009–2013) and Crate's Internship Programme in collaboration with UCA (2012–2014).
  • External Panel Member for the MA Painting Revalidation at the Royal College of Art (2009).
  • External examiner on MA Painting, Wimbledon School of Art.
  • La Cité Internationale des Arts Paris Studio Award.
  • The British Institution Fund Painting Award.