Noodle: Familiar Faces and an Eye for Light

Noodle

Artist

Portraiture, playful references and a fascination with light shape Noodle’s paintings, as the Scottish artist explores new subjects and larger surfaces from her studio in Bangor.

A recent mural commission took Noodle to Sligo, where she also spent time exploring the area with her newly adopted dog, Hunter. It is another journey made through painting for the Scottish artist, now based at Boom Studios in Bangor.

Her work moves between canvas and public space, taking in portraits of musicians, animals, friends and images that bring a familiar cultural reference somewhere unexpected.

Her return to art began in Glasgow. Having drawn regularly as a teenager, she had largely stopped around seventeen. At about twenty-five, she moved in with friends who painted, and their encouragement persuaded her to try again.

“As soon as I started painting I became obsessed, it took over my life.” she says.

What began as an experiment quickly became a significant part of her life, opening up an interest she had left untouched for years.

Her mother’s portrait painting offered an early influence, and faces became a way to develop her own skills. There was a familiar starting point in the musicians she loved, whose images gave her something she wanted to spend time painting. Looking back on the importance of portraiture to her development, she says, “it definitely taught me how to paint”.

Faces And Familiar Voices

Amy Winehouse, Little Simz and Billie Eilish are among the musicians who have appeared in her work. Music accompanies the process itself, sometimes with a deliberate connection between what she hears and the face taking shape.

“When I’m painting an artist I try to only listen to their music, it helps me feel connected to them.”

Working on a portrait could mean spending those hours immersed in the subject’s music as well as studying their appearance.

The demands of likeness are part of what makes these paintings engaging. A recognisable face depends on relationships between features, areas of shadow and the light that gives them form. For Noodle, learning through portraits has provided a foundation she can carry into other subjects, even as she begins to feel drawn towards different approaches.

One Billie Eilish portrait took her work onto a wall in Belgium. Long after painting it, she received an unexpected reminder of its existence when someone tagged her in an Instagram post from a rave in the building. The image was still there, although the surface was crumbling. A painting made during one visit had remained part of the place, encountered by people arriving for entirely different reasons.

Learning On The Wall

Her introduction to spray paint came after returning to her hometown near Elgin, where she reconnected with friend and artist Rabb Graffiti. He encouraged her to try the medium, shared his supplies and showed her what he knew. His work involved large cartoon imagery, while she was interested in realism, so his guidance gave her a starting point from which to develop her own approach.

That difference in style meant she had to work out some of the shading and finer transitions through practice. Later, advice from artists like FRODRIK in Glasgow who painted realism helped her progress further.

Learning happened through a combination of generosity and experimentation: someone offering the tools or explaining a technique, followed by the work of discovering how to use it for the image she wanted to make.

Legal walls were particularly valuable during those early stages.

“Legal walls gave me the space to fail and try again, something that’s so important as an artist. I’d tell anyone that wants to give it a go to start there.” she says.

They offered somewhere to practise, with the understanding that another artist might paint over the result soon afterwards.

Her mother found that impermanence frustrating, but Noodle understood the exchange. Making her own painting had often meant covering somebody else’s work first.

An Eye For Light

Across her paintings, light offers another point of interest: prismatic colour, reflections through water and the small distortions visible in droplets. These effects invite attention to what happens within an image, where shifts in colour and brightness can change how a surface or form is perceived.

“I’ve always been obsessed with lights – the atmosphere different lights can create.”

It’s an interest that extends into the spaces where she lives and works. She prefers peripheral lights to the big light, and fairy lights have become part of her studio at Boom.

That sensitivity gives a connection between the atmosphere she enjoys around her and the effects she explores in paint. A portrait offers the challenge of describing a face through light and shade; water and prismatic effects introduce other possibilities for observing how light changes what we see.

As her subjects develop, this remains an area of curiosity she continues to explore.

A Little Of Scotland, At Home In Ireland

Noodle’s paintings bring together the people, places and cultural references that have shaped her, each offering a glimpse of the personality behind the work.

Her reimagining of Mount Rushmore places Billy Connolly, Lewis Capaldi, Andy Murray and Alex Ferguson together on the mountainside, while another painting brings Mean Girls into the orbit of Glasgow’s famously traffic-coned Duke of Wellington. These images carry the places, personalities and shared jokes that have become part of her life, giving her work a character that feels distinctly her own.

Music, films, friendships and Scottish identity all contribute to that emerging artistic persona. These references sit together, reflecting the things she enjoys and the experiences she brings with her. Having fallen in love with Ireland while travelling in her van, she has chosen to make her home here; her imagination and warmth becoming part of the arts community around us.

The People Behind The Paintings

The relationships around Noodle have helped shape both her painting and the name she makes it under. Her mother’s portraits offered an early influence, and her admiration for that work remains clear.

“She has a really distinctive style,” she says. “And, I feel like that’s what I want to try and figure out for myself.”

Her sister, meanwhile, supplied the nickname, comparing her blonde curls to noodles. The name also appealed through her love of Gorillaz and its guitarist, Noodle.

Encouragement has often arrived through the people closest to her. Friends in Glasgow persuaded her to paint again after years away, a moment she now recognises as significant.

“I can’t even imagine another world,” she says, “maybe if I hadn’t moved in with them, I wouldn’t have even started painting.”

Other artists shared materials, techniques and advice as she began using spray paint, while her boyfriend joined her during her recent trip to Sligo, where a mural commission became a weekend of exploring.

These relationships have accompanied her development, offering practical support and experiences that become part of the life behind the paintings.

Her van gives her the freedom to travel for work and explore along the way, although she remains undecided about turning it into a painting of its own. “I go back and forth with this in my mind all the time,” she says. “I would love to paint it.”

Because she sometimes stays in it while travelling, however, she appreciates its discreet appearance as an old work van. At a painting event in Glasgow, she noticed that other artists camping in their vans had made much the same choice.

New Subjects, New Surfaces

Although portraits have been central to her practice, Noodle is now exploring what comes next. “I feel like I’m in the middle of a big shift,” she says. Her mother’s distinctive style is something she admires, and finding an approach that feels equally her own is becoming an important part of recent work.

When she talks about future portraits, she is increasingly interested in painting friends and people she knows. One image began with a photograph of a friend dressed as a fairy for Hallowe’en, which she loved for years before eventually painting it. These subjects bring a different relationship to the work. “I feel more connected to it,” she says.

Animals are another recent interest, and she has enjoyed beginning to paint them. Jellyfish have also appeared more than once, a recurring subject she associates with an early tattoo given to her by a friend. Rather than settling immediately on one direction, she wants to try different styles and discover which ideas she wants to develop further.

Her choice of surfaces is expanding alongside those interests. Walls, utility boxes, skateboards, garages and vans have all provided places to paint, with friends and animals among the subjects carried on vehicles. Having painted two vans, she is keen to do more.

“I just love the idea that someone’s going to be driving around in it,” she says. The finished painting travels beyond the place where she made it, becoming part of somebody’s everyday journeys.

She also wants to paint bigger walls. From the studio in Bangor, where she has given herself space to work and experiment, there is plenty she wants to pursue.

Portraiture has taught her to look closely, spray paint has brought new technical challenges, and each unfamiliar subject offers another opportunity to develop. The next stage lies in bringing those skills to the images she feels most connected to, with room to keep discovering what she wants to paint.

Explore Noodle’s online shop for prints of some of her most popular work: noodle.bigcartel.com

And keep up with Noodle via social media: @noodlestuudio

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